3/24/11 - Portraits and Shadows

Light is important for photography. That much is obvious, since "photo" is a root that means light.

Today, since it was such a beautiful sunshiney day (rare for a March in Seattle), we went outside and played around with lighting, working with the light shining on the subject from the back, both sides, and from the front.

Another thing: the portraits. All the portraits were taken using the rule of thirds. You take a picture and break it into 9 grids: 3 columns and 3 rows. At the corners of the central grid, that's where the subject's eyes should be, since that's where you naturally look when you look at a photograph. It makes the eyes stand out and shine.

While editing, I played aroud with the exposure and experimented a bit to see how things turned out. Take a look:

Side lighting; edited for sharpness and exposure.



Back lighting, a bit of editing for exposure.



Still back lighting; edited for exposure and vignette effect.

Back lighting (AGAIN); no editing.

Side lighting; edited for exposure and saturation.

Back lighting; edited for exposure and color.



Front lighting; edited for color and black and white effect.

Same photo as before, but edited for her shirt. It says "Planet Earth turns slowly"
If you DON'T know where that's from, you're an Owl City hater.



Tree hugger! Front lighting; edited for color and cropping. Blogspot automatically rotated it, sadly.



Hope you liked them!

 - Rosa