Saturday, May 8, 2010

2010 - Week 18, Fluorescent Lights + Color Cast + Flash

Dance Studio - recital picture day for If all the Raindrops were Lemon drops & Gumdrops
May 8, 2010 10:38 am
Nikon D90, 35mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, Built In Flash, ISO 500, SS 1/50, f/4.5, Flash Bias -2.3
WB set to Fluorescent, Spot Metering, AF-S

This photo is an example of all the bad things that can conspire against a mom with a camera trying to take a great picture.
* No Natural Light/Fluorescent Lights
* Color Cast from bright turquoise accents & yellow reflective fabric
* Facial Shadows from hat

Compositionally, it isn't anything to get excited about either...look at all that head space...bleh.

It was soft, and got even softer after I ran Noiseware because it was noisy as all get-out even at ISO 500.

I dialed the flash way down to just give the face some light from under that hat.

Now that it's over here on the blog, I'm seeing yellow casts everywhere on the skin, I "fixed" their turquoise legs, and now it looks like they are wearing neutral tights again, but I am trying to imagine what the professional photographer who was taking pictures today was thinking as she was looking at all the bright reflective material. She was shooting in one of the other studios, under fluorescent lights too, but I'm sure she had some pro lights as well. We moms didn't get to come watch.

So, in the end, this for me, falls into the category of cute kids, bad photography.

I wonder if I can get them to pose again for me in some natural light, where I could use a reflector to shine some light on their faces. Seems like a lot of work doesn't it?

Week 18 2010 05 08 Dance Pics DSC_6536 web

post-processing
Cloned out the ballet barre from behind the girl's head
Ran Noiseware
Fixed turquoise color casts (missed the yellow ones)

I feel like I'm headed backwards with my photography...everything seems hard again, and I'm not at all happy with the photos I've taken recently.

1 comment:

  1. Great job! I can't see any turquoise cast and totally can't tell a bar was there.

    Emily turns 4 this month, so she'll get to start dance this summer! I'm so excited!

    ReplyDelete

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