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Monday, May 16, 2011

The other day...

I went about my house trying to find the weirdest and flattest light I could. Kidding. Ever notice how I start my blog titles with the first few words of the first sentence of my post. That oozes a lack of creativity, no? Sometimes I just cannot think of a good title. And when I do, it's usually cheese-i-fried, so trust me, it is better this way. 
Anyhow, the other day I was trying to find some nice soft directional light, and I found some flat light, and then some weird light. Ah well. Had the macro on and iso jacked up to 1600. I have to say that I am impressed with Xsi iso 1600 for head shots. It rocks. Everything else though? Not so much(like the Brothers, Bubbles, Bug post the other day-that is not good 1600 iso...and a cheesy post title to boot, see what I'm sayin'). Anyhow, I captured some sweet boys in bad light and high iso.
Pauly...flat light...
 starting to play around with skin color correction in ps5! Have NOT corrected Paul's tone here...each adjustment makes it worse, so I will keep this slightly green hued baby the way he is. He has hard skin to correct. He has an underlying olive tone. Joey is equally hard as he is so so so pale and fair.

Weird light...Petey...
Now, I did correct his, taking out lotsa magenta. No perfect, but better. Pete's skin is a dream to correct. He has rosy cheeks and his tone is just, I don't know, really easy to tweak. Each of my kids have a different tone, I swear. How did that happen? If Joe were here, he would make some terribly inappropriate UPS man joke right after I said that. As if that joke is not tired and old after nearly 9 years of marriage. Okay, I made that joke just the other day too...it's kinda funny cause the UPS man really *is* always here...we get alot of UPS mail. Once Joe made that Joke when his friends were over and the UPS man rang the doorbell right after he said it. No lie. I opened the door and everyone just started hysterically laughing. Poor UPS guy. 
We should buy UPS stock.

Tonight, I macro'd about the yard with the boys. I shot some dandelions in open shade. 






And one in full sun...
What a HUGE difference the type of light makes...




9 comments:

  1. Ohhh, those dandelion's give me the warm fuzzies..hee ;) I am secretly waiting for ours to go into seed. Only wish I had a macro!!!! Beautiful!!

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  2. Your boys are so handsome. I love the catchlights you captured in the first photo and his skin tone looks awesome! Those dandelion shots are GORGEOUS!!!!!!!

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  3. Hey Heidi! LOVE your macros and your assessment of the xsi. I too have a love/hate relationship with my camera:) I love following blogs with photogs with the xsi. It helps push me to be better:) Glad I found yours!

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  4. I JUST took some of these dandelion shots last night!! I swear, you and I are two peas in a pod! :) What sweet faces on your boys, too!

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  5. Loving these photos, your boys are so lovely and I don't think I've ever seen dandelions look so good! You rock that macro lens.

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  6. Your boys are just adorable, and those dandilion macros are AMAZING--I love them!!!! The soft light in the open shade ones is just dreamy...

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  7. What pretty dandelion shots! Great job girl!

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  8. Hi, Heidi! Those are great! I love your macro shots. Can I ask you a couple of questions?

    What aperture do you start out with, you know in general? Also, are any of these cropped to recompose and remove unwanted space? I'm REALLY struggling with macro. I either have nothing in sharp focus or I have all this crazy space but when I crop you can see that things seem are too soft. (Does that make sense?) Thanks for your help.
    ~ingrid

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  9. Hey Ingrid! I am happy to help! :) I usually use the biggest narrowest aperture I can, going as high on my iso and as low on my ss as I can allow. Here, that ended up being f.4 ss160 iso400. When I go to take a shot, I know that I like to keep it at or below iso400 because anything higher will be noisy, and ss of atleast 200. Here, 160 is a little low for the 100, I pushed it here, and if you look really close, you can make out some camera shake. So, using iso 400 and ss 200 as a guide, I will then see what f. stop it will let me use. :) I love it when I have alot of light and can use f.8 or higher! :) Cropped? yes, but just a little bit. When I shoot macro, I am at 1:1(I was here), and with 1:1 on the crop, it is usually pretty tight, so I usually just crop for a more pleasing look, but usually I don't take too much off. Hope that helps!

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