High key Yogagraphy..

For those who asked, there is no Photoshopping or background editing involved in those yoga photos in the previous post..

The trick was in setting it up and taking trial shots with Jr. and then switching places where all she had to do was click.

The no flash photos are shown here. . .

Dhotis (Veshti's) make amazing and easy backgrounds. Foam boards which come with TV packaging make great reflectors. A diffuse flash bounced on the opposite wall makes the background white enough that you can make it look like the subject is floating in space..

Easy to set up if you want great portrait shots of kids.. It is also easier to get them to pose. They think they are going into some kind of den when they walk into this all white setup!

Of course, if you have done this too many times, your kids will act like .......

THIS !

My local friends, we should try a portrait shoot at our place with the kids.. planning to construct a giant Dhotibox (lightbox equivalent) in our living room next weekend.

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High Key - trial Photoblog

Visthra had posted a facebook linkpointing to another site with some tips for high key photography.

This weekend started off very differently with both in-laws being out of the house and just the four of us starting off a lazy weekend. The nose was acting up and that meant no outdoor stuff. Perfect day to find the right bright window and play with the kids, right?

Wrong.. as it turns out, the models should help by not moving or this thing does not give you good results.

Finally what worked?

Crank ISO all the way to 1600, go 1/60 to 1/200(for the moving models we raise in this house), and go as open as the aperture would allow me with the 18-200mm at 150-200mm. No flash (but used two foam sheets to reflect light back on to the kids..

The other option was to use the 50mm and go f1.8 with the ISO still at 1600 and 1/250 seconds.

Expose for the subject, don't worry about the background. Let it flood the shot. That pretty much summarizes the "high key" concept. Can totally see why a bounce flash would be useful in this case.

Here are the first trial results. They will be perfected over time..

Thanks to Visithra and Louis Pang for making an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning, exciting!

ps. on a side note.. ain't manual mode great? If you took a picture of the kids in automatic mode in the same location with the same setup, this is what you will get! There is more to photography than having a good or great camera. It is all the little tricks and the experience you build with constant experimentation, learning from failures and improving on successful shots that makes a difference.

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