Silhouettes
If backlighting is what happens when your subject is lit from behind while you expose for their face, then silhouettes are what happen when a subject is lit mostly from behind and you expose for the light.
Silhouettes are created in extreme lighting situations when the light behind your subject is bright and the light on and in front of your subject is low. When you expose for the bright background, you render your foreground and suject to be darker, giving you a silhouette. It's a great storytelling trick that puts just the form or the "idea" of your subject completely in context with it's background. Just look at this story told at the beach near sunset...
When using a point and shoot camera or shooting in automatic, turn off your flash and the camera will do the work for you - automatically exposing for the brightest part of the image (the backlight). When shooting in manual, spot meter for the background (the brightest light) by pointing your camera at the backlight and get your settings from there!
One of the best things about Silhouettes? They're easy to accomplish with just a little bit of trial and error and they go a long way to help you understand how your camera handles exposure. Artsy and informative - what's not to love?!?
Backlight
It's one of those things. You probably nailed it on accident once or twice and had no idea how to do it again. You've certainly seen in some really jaw-dropping photos but you could never put your finger on exactly what was going on. But wow, once you understand how backlighting works you can reap it's benefits and rock it in your own photos!
Backlighting is easy to describe. It's that beautiful light that shines from behind your subject, illuminating them to the point where they quite literally glow! It can truly take your breath away when done well. But it's not always the easiest effect to acheive - it's one of those lighting opportunities you have to be on the lookout for, and then know how to take advantage of it!
Generally, backlighting works when the light behind your subject is far brighter than the light in front of them. Momtographers will likely find when the late afternoon sun is low in the sky, there's plenty of opportunity for backlighting. Just position your tot facing away from the sun (look for that glowing rim around their hair!) get infront of them, and snap away. They don't have to be directly between your lens and the sun, in fact, it's better if the sun hits them more at an angle. And you'll have to be on the lookout for lens flare depending on how much light is directly entering your lens. It's a practice that takes, well, practice. But it's an effort that pays off in glorious images.
But once you find your backlighting - you still have to get your camera settings right. This can be tricky in and of itself. Backlighting creates a dynamic lighting situation that can be hard to meter for. Where do you meter? The face? The hair? And what mode do you meter in? Spot? Center? (Yes, yes, we promised simple, but you said you wanted "serious snap" so it's time we start asking some of photography's harder questions).
We suggest starting with spot metering and going off your child's face. You're going to get lots of blown exposure around the hair and in the sky - but that's part of what makes this look work. In fact, you're just going to have to learn to accept that with backlit photos, you will end up with some overexposed, blown out backgrounds. Because unless your cutie is a glowing ball of brightness like your light source, chances are their skin is go ing to be darker than the background. You can try slightly underexposing thier face to maintain more detail in the background area - you can always play with it in post processing to brighten up the face or bring the background down further. This is what we've found works best most of the time. Well, that and learning to live with overexposed, blown-out backgrounds in exchange for an illuminated glowing angel child!
There's one final challenge with a backlit photo... that's getting nice light on the face and a catchlight in the eye! Why? Well, the light's BEHIND them. But, if you have them facing a reflective source like a reflector, a body of water or a bright wall bouncing light at them, well then, voila!
Window Light
We love love love window light! There is just something about it! We said it before in Brand Spankin' New - every home has at least one great pocket of light and often times it will be in front of a window, or better yet, a bunch of windows.
Window light is great for many reasons: you are almost guaranteed good catchlights, your light is lightly diffused and usually pretty even, (except for times when the sun is low in the sky shining directly through it), plus you have the added benefit of being indoors, sheltered from the elements - you never have the weather to blame for not getting GREAT pictures of your fam!
The other great thing about finding an awesome window is the predictability! Over time you will be so familiar with the light and how it come through your window, it will take little effort to create magic time and time again in your little "spot".
The key to really using good window light is to have the window behind you or to the side of you and your camera while your subject faces it. Here - sometimes it's just easier to SHOW you...
Adrienne's happy place in her Alabama neighborhood is her kitchen! As we see here, she has the window to her back and sweet Sydney directly facing the light streaming in.
And here is an example of some of that magic that Krista loves to conjure up in her living room! Krista is lucky enough to have a living room that is 3/4 covered in windows (quite the rarity in NYC!). Needless to say, she spends a LOT of time shooting there.
She's actually sitting on her window sill with little Miss Luca directly in front of her, looking up at her.
Oh - here's actually a picture of the window Krista was sitting on... but used differently. This picture is a whole other way to use window light - as a backdrop! But that gets a little more complicated, so we'll save it for another lesson or we'll check it out in our learn by looking section!
Bottom line - consider window light the gift that just keeps giving to your family-documenting journey. Even, beautiful, glowing light that will show your child in the best light!
Open Shade
If every day were a bright cloudy day, the world would be yours for the picture taking. Ah - if only we controlled the weather, right? But since we haven't yet figured out how to cue the clouds, we have to look for "pockets" of good light to optimize our picture taking conditions. Enter your friend, open shade.
Just like it's cousin, the cloudy day, open shade creates conditions favorable to picture taking because it is an evenly-lit soft place. When taking photographs outdoors with all-natural light, your biggest obstacles are hard-cast shadows and extreme brights and darks.
So what is it? Open shade is the place where light and shade meet to create an evenly lit space that is just off of the bright light, but not in it. You find it by looking for the hard line at the edge of the light - and then place your subject TOTALLY IN THE SHADE, but FACING the light.
Think garages, doorways, porches, overhangs, and alleyways. Anywhere a nice solid shaded area comes smack up against a wall of light.
You would never know by looking at this picture that just in front of Chloe was the high noon Las Vegas summer sun! The ottoman that she is laying on is right up to the edge of a cabana opening where she is facing that bright light, but not actually in it. 1/2 a foot back towards the wall and it she would have fallen into the dark. 1/2 a foot forward and it would have been too bright for a good picture! But right at the edge of where the two meet is MAGIC!
What to watch out for -
A common mistake made by beginners and (surprisingly) even some seasoned momtographers is when looking for open shade they go right to that beautifully shady spot under the tree in the backyard. While this may seem like a great idea, unless your shade tree area is very dense, most trees create what is known as dappled light. You know when you look at someone and see cheetah-like spots all over them from the shadows created by light coming through the trees?
Look at the top picture! The baby's got spots! What looked like a nice shady area really wasn't one!
Now look at the spots on the ground all around the stroller - that should have been our first warning. Before you start snapping under the tree - inspect the ground - do you see any of the telltale spots? If not, then go for it. If so, then it's really not true open shade - it's more like broken shade!
Again, your safest bet is to look for true shade next to or under a real stucture. Find that line between light and dark - put your subject i n the shade facing the light and VOILA!
Cloudy Days
Upside down and backwards....
...if you haven't figured it out by now, that's how most things in photography go. So why wouldn't outdoor lighting be any different? Ask anyone but a photographer, "What kind of day do you think is best for taking your kids out for some awesome picture taking?" and the answer is going to be, "A bright and beautiful blue-skied sunny day!".Well if your name is Annie Liebovitz or if you had an arsenal of equipment, years of experience and invisible sunglasses for your kiddos, that might be the right answer. But since none of the above apply (at least for us!), allow us to introduce you to one of our favorite secret weapons - the bright cloudy day!
We just adore bright cloudy days - they make Momtographers look good! See, an overcast sky is natures diffuser. The clouds capture the harsh bright light of the sun, filtering and spreading it into soft, even lighting that is very flatering - especially when photographing children. It's so flattering that bright overcast days should be written into the schedule as portrait days!
If you remember from our talk on light and exposure, the science of digital photography has to do with how your camera records light to make a picture. All cameras have limitations on how much information they can see and interpret - even the best camera doesn't have near the range of the human eye. For this reason, bright, sunny conditions can be extremely tricky for your camera. Generally, in bright sun, two things happen that work against you:
First, the direct sun is so powerful that it creates huge extremes between light and dark - too extreme for the sensor on your camera to interpret and record. In an effort to properly record one extreme (usually the white), your camera completely loses the other.
The second problem is the harsh shadows cast on whatever the rays of the sun aren't hitting directly making the difference between light and dark even greater. This means unless your children came stock with removable foreheads, their eyes will get lost in the shadow of their brow bone while the sun is overhead. That's if their eyes aren't already totally shut from squinting!
The photo above demonstrates both problems that sunny-day shooting can cause. The first problem is the harsh shadowing cast by the direct unfiltered rays of light coming from above. Because Sydney has her head tilted down, her entire face is covered in shadow, save for a little bit of light reflecting off of her Paw Paw's cap. And Paw Paw, are you even there?
But a BRIGHT overcast day - one with an even covering of light grey clouds that cover the sun - creates light that is soft and even allowing a digital camera to get much more detail from every part of the color spectrum. This ensures that you won't be searching for your little one's eyes in a shadow, or lose too many important details in the dark trying to keep the highlights from blowing out! All you have to do is look for a good background and you're covered.
See this picture of Chloe - she is standing out in the middle of the sidewalk where normally there is no shade and it would be far too bright to get an evenly lit picture. But because it was slightly overcast - Krista was able to effortlessly capture this portrait followed by Chloe's afternoon jumpathon!
Notice how Chloe's face is evenly lit and here eyes are bright and open wide! THANK YOU OVERCAST SKIES!!!
White Balance
Have you ever taken what you thought was a wonderful picture, only to look back at it and see that your cutie pie has turned a Violet-tint of blue? Or that your mom's family looks orange? What's up with that?
Did you know that light has different colors? As if you needed one more thing to consider when taking pictures of your kids, right? It's true - different kinds of light have different colors. Bright sunlight can make whites appear blue. Late afternoon sun can make whites appear orange. And indoor flourescent lights can make white appear green. If your camera doesn't know what color light it's looking at, it can record something that look fine while you're in the moment looking at it, but totally off when you look back at it.
This is because your brain is still much much smarter than your camera. It just "knows" what white is supposed to look like, and automatically adjusts everything else in your head to appear correctly. Your camera, on the other hand, usually needs a little adjustment - a white balance - to tell it what white is supposed to look like under different conditions.
Here's a perfect example of different light sources having different colors. Do you see how the light in front of baby's face looks to be orange and glowing? Even the wall in the back-right has an orange tint to it. That's because the paper lantern has an incandescent bulb inside of it which is to the yellow side of the color spectrum. Now look at the light coming from the left - do you see the highlights on her forehead and hitting the top of the stuffed pig's head? They're much bluer in color - in fact, look at the wall on the far left, it's almost completely blue. That's because the afternoon sun of a cloudy cloudy day was pouring in through that window - that kind of has much more blue in it than the orange glow of incandescent light.
To understand what's going on under the hood of white balance, let's talk a little science. Light is different colors because (and this matters much more to physicists and graphic designers than to us) it's actually different temperatures. As all things counterintuitive in photography go, the cooler the temperature is the more yellow-based it's light. The warmer the temperature, the more blue-based. This becomes more confusing as photographers still refer to warm light as being orange, and cool light as being blue.
But you don't really have to remember those details past this conversation! The good news is that your camera does a lot of the white balance work for you. It has a few different settings to help you out. Just let it know what kind of light you're working with - bright sun, shade, indoor, etc. There's even an automatic setting that works most of the time.
We recommend that you use the automatic White Balance setting and shoot in RAW. Your camera will get it right often enough to save you the adjustment work 90% of the time. But if it doesn't guess right - then you can adjust the RAW white balance settings in your computer without screwing anything else up!
In the pictures below, taken on the cloudiest of winter days, the camera interpereted the light to be blue - too blue! But with a quick adjustmentt in our post processing software to the RAW white balance settings, thie picture looks correct to our eye.
So set that white balance to automatic, make sure you're shooting in RAW and it's just one less thing to think about while you're taking those beautiful pics of your babes.
Image Sensor - ISO
What is it?
We made it! A digital photograph does not exist until your camera's image sensor is exposed to light. It's the place where all those mysterious megapixels you were sold on live. Quite literally, your image sensor is a rectangular-shaped platter of millions of little light sensitive pockets called pixels waiting for you to snap your shutter so they can collect light, divide it into red, green and blue and save it as a file on your memory card. All that to say - the image sensor is what receives the light and interprets it into an actual digital photograph.
How is it measured?
ISO is the measurement of how sensitive your camera's sensor is. Why it's called ISO isn't going to help our cause, so don't stay up at night worrying about it.
Depending on your camera, ISO numbers are typically 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, etc.
If you remember anything about film cameras, ISO is very much like film speed. Changing this setting doesn't actually change how much light your camera collects (that's up to the aperture and shutter), it just tells your camera how sensitive it needs to be in receiving it. A low ISO setting means the sensor is less sensitive, while a higher ISO setting makes your sensor more sensitive.
What does this mean to you?
When there's lots of light, there's no reason to increase the sensitivity of your image sensor. So on a bright sunny day - set ISO to it's lowest available setting. As the light decreases (shade, evening or darker interiors) increase your ISO. That's it - easy peasy!
Your camera was optimized to make the best images when ISO is set to it's lowest setting. If the right amount of light is let through the shutter from the aperture, a low ISO setting allows the image sensor to deliver it's best work - crisp, clear, pristine digital images. So, if you can, you want to keep it low.
Sometimes, especially indoors, there just isn't enough light available for your sensor to get a good exposure. Turning up the ISO increases your sensor's sensitivity, making more out of the light it receives.
But NOTHING comes free, right? The higher you turn up the sensitivity, the less accurate the sensor becomes. What's referred to as "noise" is introduced to the image.
Look at the photo above. The ISO on a beautifully lit late afternoon was accidentally left on 1250 when it probably should have been closer to 200-300 (hey, it happens to all of us!), and what would have been a gorgeous set of photos was marred with noise. But on the shots where the exposure was pretty good, the noise wasn't that big of an issue, even at full magnification. You can see some of the telltale dots, especially in her hair and in the shadows on her skin, but unless this photo was meant to be blown up, it really is fine for the family collection.
Where we run into trouble is in the photos where the exposure wasn't correct. Normally we'd just adjust the exposure in the computer after the fact, but photos with noise resulting from high ISO settings don't respond very well to even minor adjustments in post proccessing. Below is another photo taken on the same afternoon with the same unfortunate ISO settings. A beatiful moment was captured, but underexposed. Look what happens to the noise when we try to correct the exposure - the noise practically jumps off the screen!
You don't want noise in your photos, but unless the only place you take pictures is in the bright outdoor light, raising the ISO is, at times, unavoidable. The good news? Camera sensors are getting more and more accurate at higher ISO levels, especially when you get the overall exposure correct. Need more good news? Even pictures with a lot of noise are fairly pleasing at smaller sizes (see the picture above on the left). So no matter what, never sacrifice missing a moment because you were afraid to turn your ISO too high! Go for it!
Bottom line?
A low ISO setting is ideal. But nothing's perfect and you'd be much better off raising it and getting some noise than missing your toddler's first sommersault because the lighting at the gym was less than ideal. (oh, trust us, lighting at the gym STINKS!)
Low ISO number = use in BRIGHT setting = lower sensitivity and less noise
High ISO number = use in less light = higher sensitivity and more noise
Catch The Light In Their Eyes!
Ever wonder how some kids just seem to always have that twinkle in their eye, like in EVERY picture? Well that Momtographer has learned the magic of "catchlights."
Catchlights - if you haven't heard the term yet, rest assured, you will. It's a phrase that gets a lot of play in portrait photography circles - and with good reason!But what the heck are they? Some sort of magic lighting gizmo that comes with membership to the secret society of expert photographers? Um, no. Quite simply, they are reflections of light CAUGHT in your subject's eyes. The key to getting a catchlight is to always have your little one face the light source (i.e. a window, door or sunshine) so that the light can reflect back into their eyes.
Here's a little tip - if you can SEE it before taking the picture then it's there!
Once you master this little, or should we say BIG tip, you will be well on your way to transforming your snapshots from blah, to WOW!
And please - we BEG you - resist the urge to fake it! There are so many tips, tricks, tutorials and software actions out there to create a catchlight where there isn't one, but most of the time your kid ends up looking plain creepy! Besides, why spend your time learning how to fake something that is so easy to achieve for real?!?
So what exactly do we mean by facing the light source? Here let us show you...
Now that you "see" it, it's pretty simple, isn't it? Now go snap to it - we want to see those catchlights!
Turn Off Your Flash!
Want to see immediate improvement in your photographs? It's one of the simplest things you can do, but it's by far, one of the most powerful. Turn off your flash!
You heard right - slap it down, turn off the switch, find it in your camera menu - do whatever it takes to turn off that flash in favor of more natural, available light.Think about it - other than playing flashlight games at a campout, when in real life is someone assaulted with a direct beam of light, just a few feet away from their eyeballs? Hardly ever - but that's exactly what an on-camera flash does.
Unnaturally bright skin, harsh shadows, and unusual reflections... there's more working against you, than for you! For crying outloud, it's the secret weapon of the DMV.
Compare the following two shots taken moments apart - one with flash, and one using the natural light of a window to baby's left. 
Turning off your flash may prove slightly challenging at first as it forces you to learn how to "read" the light around you - but that's a good thing. It'll force you to look for places with adequate light and begin to recognize light that'll offer outstanding picture opportunities. We promise - in no time at all you will be able to gauge the light in a room with little effort.
Here's another example - taken on the same day, one with flash, one with natural window light. There was no way to "get" this first picture, taken in a dark aquarium, without a flash, but doesn't the second picture serve the same purpose... only much more beautifully?
Editorial note: Our daddy model would like to disclaim that, for some adult subjects, no amount of natural light will improve their appearance. The mommy objects but humors his request.
There are moments when there just isn't enough light or time to compensate for the conditions (i.e. 4:00am on Christmas morning when stockings are being ripped apart, or their first evening bubble sculpture in the bath) and by all means use your flash in lieu of missing the moment. But as a rule, you're on our territory and it's a no flash zone!
- Find Your Pocket -
EEvery home has at least one - a gorgeous pocket of light that will reward your efforts every time! A spot that will help you take pictures that just look GOOD.Your job is to find it.
What we're looking for is an area of your home that bathes your beauties in bright, even sunlight. Think of a large window in your kitchen or living room, or bedroom. No good windows? Open a door! No good doorways? Open a garage door!One of Adrienne's favorite places to take pictures of her daughter is in the bright light of her kitchen - it's one of the spots in her home that just works.
Too little light and she can open the door. Too much light and she can adjust the shutters.
Krista loves shooting in her living room, with it's 3 full walls of windows, but she also has a lot of luck in her bedroom with only one large window. 
Just think bright, bright, bright when you're looking for the spot. When in doubt, snap a picture- the proof will be in the snap.
One you have found and mastered your indoor pockets, move outside and start investigating your neighborhood. Weather won't always permit you to be outside, but when it does, it's nice to know exactly the right spot to set the stage for those picture perfect moments.
Outside can be a little tricky with ever-changing light, bright sun, and dappled shade, but don't let that stop you! Our suggestion is to find a nice shaded doorway or overhang of a building and practice there. Check out our section on open shade for the nitty gritty!
As you get further along you will find lots of helpful tutorials about shooting in full sun, but for now, stick to evenly lit shade. The exception to that rule - well, any and every moment that you must capture that may not happen in the right lighting conditions! Happy snapping!
