Daily Sonriendo's 365 - Finished and thank flickerty for that :D

Converting that photo to black and white adds so much to it. Definitely prefer that one. Love the latest pic as well.
 
Right today's offering is the other girlie ;)

As the object of this 365 is to help me overcome the fear of the flash, I charged it's batteries and used it :) So, here she is, back lit by the sun and flash on camera. I had to stop the lens down to 5.6, but it was still a bit over expsed. Sorted it out in Light room and removed some pylons and wires in Lightroom.

I now some of the sky is blown, but I'd rather that than U/E too much the greenery. How could I have got around that please?

What do you think, am I getting there?


012 by Sonriendo, on Flickr
 
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whipspeed said:
Not sure on balancing the flash with sky, it's not something I've done much of, but love the portrait & the green is right, wonder if you could add a graduated filter in PS & then draw through where the figure is?
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I'm not sure either, the speed needed to not blow the sky was not at all compatible with the flash. I guess I could have stopped the lens down more, but I didn't realy want any of the background in focus at all. Perhaps I'll try the same thing again tomorrow :shrug:
 
I know it kinda defeats the object of the exercise,
But I think in that instance the fill flash has done you no favours.
I think I would have exposed off her face and tweaked the rest in photoshop (or LR in your case)
(I did have a little play but the background pixalates something terrible)

But its a cracking image though, and a lovely looking model too
I guess she takes after her mum? ;)
 
I really like your wine bottle & glass and the processing is great, the reflections add interest rather than distraction and, having looked very closely I do believe your wine bottle is straight! I also can't believe being so familiar with the phrase and yet having to spend to much time until I clicked what you meant by TFIF! :bonk:

I really like the composition of todays and the expression is great, but this is not an area I have any experience or interest in (from 'my' side of the camera) so am not really in a position to critique.......looks good to me though! :thumbs:
 
I love portrait work but need practice especially with flash etc... your daughter is gorgeous btw:thumbs:
 
You've got a cracking little model in your daughter. When you get chance take a look at That Nikon Guy on YouTube, he has some great video tutorials on flash, fill in flash and metering for the sky etc :). I've spent many an hour watching his stuff and learnt so much.
 
Lovely model but not sure about the flash - you can tell its been used and the light is a different direction from the daylight - maybe a bit less flash? Not sure as its something I need to work on myself - I've used it and its worked but I never make a note of what I did and by the next time I've forgotten!

Lovely composition and great model. :D
 
I think that it works well, my guess would be that you could have under exposed the background a little more, to avoid the blow out in the sky and then use some digital fill to bring the background back out :thumbs: great subject to be working with out :thumbs: and losts of days for more practice :D
 
Cobra said:
I know it kinda defeats the object of the exercise,
But I think in that instance the fill flash has done you no favours.
I think I would have exposed off her face and tweaked the rest in photoshop (or LR in your case)
(I did have a little play but the background pixalates something terrible)

But its a cracking image though, and a lovely looking model too
I guess she takes after her mum? ;)
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I shall send you the RAW files and you can tweak all you like :) No, the other one takes after me more ;)

~Sam~ said:
I really like your wine bottle & glass and the processing is great, the reflections add interest rather than distraction and, having looked very closely I do believe your wine bottle is straight! I also can't believe being so familiar with the phrase and yet having to spend to much time until I clicked what you meant by TFIF!

I really like the composition of todays and the expression is great, but this is not an area I have any experience or interest in (from 'my' side of the camera) so am not really in a position to critique.......looks good to me though!
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Yes sam, I think the wine bottle is straight too, it's the tiles that are out ;)

Cg_Girl said:
I love portrait work but need practice especially with flash etc... your daughter is gorgeous btw
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Thank you :)

snorton said:
You've got a cracking little model in your daughter. When you get chance take a look at That Nikon Guy on YouTube, he has some great video tutorials on flash, fill in flash and metering for the sky etc :). I've spent many an hour watching his stuff and learnt so much.
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I hve a book I'm meant to be reading, and have studied Strobist101 - it goes in and straight back out again :shrug:

ShoeQueen said:
Lovely model but not sure about the flash - you can tell its been used and the light is a different direction from the daylight - maybe a bit less flash? Not sure as its something I need to work on myself - I've used it and its worked but I never make a note of what I did and by the next time I've forgotten!

Lovely composition and great model. :D
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See, I did one of her sister almost the same the other day and that worked - well it did to my mind!


IMG_8792 by Sonriendo, on Flickr

MWHCVT said:
I think that it works well, my guess would be that you could have under exposed the background a little more, to avoid the blow out in the sky and then use some digital fill to bring the background back out :thumbs: great subject to be working with out :thumbs: and losts of days for more practice :D
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I did try to underexpose Matt, but the only way I could do that was by stopping the lens down and I wanted a shallowish DOF to put the crappy background out of focus :shrug:
 
Dumping and running at the moment, hopefully I will have time to check out everyone's threads this evening. Busy in the garden, so here you go


013 by Sonriendo, on Flickr

I'm lucky enough to have some sort of flower in the garden, everyday of the year - this has the advantage of smelling lovely too.
 
I like that Sarah. I'd like to see it a bit brighter overall though. Still, fantastic shot!
 
toadstool said:
I like that Sarah. I'd like to see it a bit brighter overall though. Still, fantastic shot!
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Thank you, when I took the shot in full sun, it blew the flower out, so I had to block the sun out ;) I did mute it a bit in PS though.

whipspeed said:
Very pretty, would make a nice greetings card.
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Thank you

vince31 said:
A wonderful flower the Jasmin, great shot Sarah !!
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Thanks Vince it's one of my favourites - for the smell. Although I prefer Galan de la Noche - which is far stronger smelling and tiny little trumpet flowers.
 
i like the portraits of your daughters and the Jasmine flower is fab ..im not a big flower person, but this one really appeals to me
 
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Firstly, nice flower shot, but it looks a little pixelated. Was this a heavy crop? Irrespective of that I still quite like it.

It's a pity about 12. Good idea, but due to you overexposing the shot, and as you've mentioned, you've lost the sky so it's unrecoverable. I think if you hadn't overexposed the shot at the time you'd have probably pulled back some of that sky, especially if you're shooting in raw mode. I think that's the only thing you needed to correct here, get the exposure right in Camera and you've got much more detail in the raw file to play with and help you recover. Unfortunately, this means stopping down even more and sacrificing some depth of field.

Only other advice I can offer is (in case you're not aware of this) - if you're in manual mode, changing your aperture will always increase/decrease your exposure. But the shutter speed will not affect the flash exposure, only ambient/sun light exposure. But you've shot the above at what I believe is the max sync speed (250) so it must have been a somewhat bright day. For that reason you're unfortunate because you were always going to struggle with trying to get a shallow depth of field while using a flash. But, another option rather than using a flash is to use a reflector to try get more ambient light / sunlight on the subject. I'm sure you didn't have a reflector to hand! But might be food for thought for another day. With a reflector it's a different way to throw light on the subject and you can abandon the flash to allow for a much higher shutter speed. This way you can still light your subject and not overexpose backgrounds.

(Oh, and an after thought, another option is put a filter on the lens to help "manually" stop it down :))

Takes practice, and I'm by no means an expert! But if you're like me you'll enjoy experimenting!
 
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karmagarda said:
Firstly, nice flower shot, but it looks a little pixelated. Was this a heavy crop? Irrespective of that I still quite like it.

It's a pity about 12. Good idea, but due to you overexposing the shot, and as you've mentioned, you've lost the sky so it's unrecoverable. I think if you hadn't overexposed the shot at the time you'd have probably pulled back some of that sky, especially if you're shooting in raw mode. I think that's the only thing you needed to correct here, get the exposure right in Camera and you've got much more detail in the raw file to play with and help you recover. Unfortunately, this means stopping down even more and sacrificing some depth of field.

Only other advice I can offer is (in case you're not aware of this) - if you're in manual mode, changing your aperture will always increase/decrease your exposure. But the shutter speed will not affect the flash exposure, only ambient/sun light exposure. But you've shot the above at what I believe is the max sync speed (250) so it must have been a somewhat bright day. For that reason you're unfortunate because you were always going to struggle with trying to get a shallow depth of field while using a flash. But, another option rather than using a flash is to use a reflector to try get more ambient light / sunlight on the subject. I'm sure you didn't have a reflector to hand! But might be food for thought for another day. With a reflector it's a different way to throw light on the subject and you can abandon the flash to allow for a much higher shutter speed. This way you can still light your subject and not overexpose backgrounds.

(Oh, and an after thought, another option is put a filter on the lens to help "manually" stop it down :))

Takes practice, and I'm by no means an expert! But if you're like me you'll enjoy experimenting!
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Conor

Thanks so much for taking the time to write all this :)

The object was to use the flash, and I could've used a reflector - but it would've defeated the object.

I was shooting almost into the sun, and I know I should've taken a bit more time to get it just right, by closing the lens down just a bit more. The thought of a polarising filter did cross my mind, but as that would've involoved a "hunt" I dissmissed it :lol:

I actually exposed for the field and then dropped the exposure a bit - but it did nothing for the sky I'm afraid :lol:
 
I like your Jasmine, Sarah (lovely flowers with a lovely smell) and the colour of the border compliments a well composed photo really nicely! :thumbs:
 
some wonderful shots here Sarah - great portraits and love the flower
 
I do love flower shots.. Pretty one Sarah :thumbs:
 
My turn to explore the universe of Abstract this week - hoping to keep my Macro lens on all week, but must change my tripod plate over from my old camera - sooo shaky :lol:


014 by Sonriendo, on Flickr
 
Lovely .... love the background :) How did you get them so perfect?
 
ahhhh got it :) Thanks
 
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