We were blessed with some gorgeous weather a little while ago and thankfully I had booked the week off work so we made the use of the sun (and heat) and got the paddling pool out. It was a difficult task as I don't have a waterproof camera and the water was freezing! I'm not quite sure how Hannah coped with getting under the water!
Challenging yourself to develop your skills is always fun and you can discover that you're really good (or really bad) at certain things. I have adored taking photos and think that I have really improved since I first started taking photos.
Photography is all about composure. You could have the best camera in the world but it won't mean a thing if you don't know how to properly compose a photo. Using the rule of thirds is always great and sometimes it pays off to break the rules completely and take an unconventional photo.
It also works to have a model who is comfortable. My little sister almost never wants me to take photos of her, she can never be bothered, but when she gets into it she loves it. It helps that we're sisters but I always try to make our shoots fun. Showing her the photos, making fun of the awkward angles we put ourselves in and just having a laugh.
It's important to capture personality in photos. It makes the model look much more radiant and really improves the photo. This isn't always easy and is usually helped when you do environmental portraiture (photos in the model's natural habitat). When you're shooting in a different location, this personality comes down to taking shots that are more 'off guard'.
Obviously, when it comes to photography, there's a lot of technical details that are very important starting with the exposure triangle: ISO; aperture; and shutter speed. With portrait photography, I'm a big fan of using a wide aperture (also known as the f. stop). The lower this number is (f/1.2) the bigger/wider the aperture is, creating a bohka (a blurrier background) which then draws more attention to the focal point of the image.
When we were doing this shoot I used a very fast shutter speed of around 1/4000. This works well when you want to capture something that's moving - in this case, it was to capture the water droplets as they were falling. We used the hose pipe to spray water over my sister (which she hated), using a really fast shutter speed meant that I could capture all of the water droplets, even the ones dripping from her chin and hands.
There's not much more for me to say about this shoot other than it was really fun and I encourage everyone to give this a go when the weather gets warmer again. Shooting in the water was so challenging but we ended up with some amazing photos which I'm really, really happy with.
You can find more of the images from my water shoot below:
Comments
Post a Comment