Megan by the window
 

I have been taking photos of my kids inside our house in natural light by different windows. I've been also reading Mike's thread about lighting. This photo was really a 'test' photo as I was trying out different windows and different distances away from each window. If I get much further away from the window which is facing south, my photos always are too dark.

My daughter's hair is a mess and I know there is a composition problem with cutting off her arm (!) but I'm primarily interested in her face. I see highlights and many ranges of value.

I want to do a portrait of my daughter leaning against a wall and introduce some type in the background. Of course, I'm keeping open minded and this could change, but that is my 'vision' right now.

Thank you in advance for any comments,

Joan

More light?
 

Hi Joan,

I like the colors in Megan's face. Nice tones, and she has such a pleasant expression.

What does strike me is that her face appears to not have enough light on it. If you have a digital camera, can you experiment with moving her a bit forward into the window's light? Then you can compare and see which looks better.

Too light? Not sure
 

Thank you Julie for your reply,

I took this photo with a digital camera so it'll be easy to take more. Good idea. I'm wondering though if I move her closer to the window then the light might wash out the lit side of her face? I guess there is only one way to find out. Maybe this configuration won't work at all, I wanted her leaning against a wall but this way her face is turned AWAY from the light. I leaned her against that wall behind her (perpendicular to the wall with the window) but it was too far away from the window and turned out too dark.

Thank you for your nice comments about the colors in her face, I achieved those by complete accident! Seems I get better skin tone color with my digital than I do with my still camera.

Joan

If you have Photoshop, I'd suggest playing with the brightness and contrast. You'll be astonished at how much you can change it to get the look you may want. You also have the option of using the color balance, if you want to take down the redness. And there's the saturation option should you wish to lessen the intensity. When you brighten it, you might burn out the white of the shirt somewhat, which need not be a problem as you always have the original to check it against. To avoid this you can use the "lasso" to isolate the parts of the photo you want to change. All of this can be done in a matter of minutes, seconds even. -- John C.

Manipulating photos
 

John, Thank you for your reply:

Seconds, maybe for you! I am not that handy will all the technical stuff, I usually have to get one of my kids to help me.

I didn't even think about Photoshop. I don't have Photoshop but I do have another program that will manipulate photos. (Actually I'm not that bad with the technical stuff.) I will try and see what I can do with that. I have thought about buying Photoshop since I've seen a lot of the applications applied to various photos on this forum. It may be time for me to look seriously at Photoshop.

Thank you for your great idea :exclamati

Joan

Joan, this looks awfully good but I'll bet you could make it better. Turn her face to the window so that she's in profile, facing to our right. Have her face turn slowly toward you and stop when the inside corners of both eyes (the inner canthus) are hit by the light. See if you can get the classic 3/4 light to 1/4 shadow in the classic 3/4 face pose. Having both eyes lit up will help you a great deal in painting.

However, you may not be able to do this and keep a good shadow pattern with your full side lighting from the window. Maybe you can experiment with making the light come from a higher source: block off the bottom half of the window with a dark blanket, perhaps?

Small problems in this photo that will haunt you later include the mysterious lack of a nostril on our left side.

She is a beautiful girl and this will be a wonderful painting.

I think moving her closer to the window would help a lot. Just use some kind of reflector to balance out the light on the darker side. A piece of white cardboard or foamcore would work just fine. I use them even when I am painting from life to soften the shadows. Kodak makes a handy dandy inexpensive "Light Ratio Metering Calculator". It contains a light ratio calculator and light ratio gray cards. It is simple to use and will help with metering and balancing your available light sources. One thing to keep in mind, is that it would be good to find a spot where you can paint her as well as photograph her. Natural light gives invaluable skintone information.

I think Linda Brandon suggestions are well worth trying. I am concerned with the focal length of the lens you are using. It looks like a 50mm when you should be using an 85 or a 105. The shot looks too close. I longer focal length is generally better for portraits.

So much help!
 

Dear Linda and Sharon,

Thank you both for all your help! I turned on the computer and found Linda's post so called my daughter for more photos, then by the time I got back to the computer there was the post from you Sharon! So I called my daughter again.

I love the new pose, though I still have the problem of no far nostril. Linda, that is a perfect way to direct someone to a pose, I like those instructions and my daughter is old enough to follow my instructions. I see what you mean about having the light come from above, in the ones I just took the light is 'lighting her up' almost from a lower level. I did have her pose on her knees by the window (quicker than draping off the bottom of the window) but for some reason that whole series of photos by that same window turned out too dark today.

Sharon, I plan to paint this by using the reference photo and my daughter from life. I learned what a big difference there is between life and photos on my last portrait so it was a great idea to take pictures of her in my 'studio', which is more of a painting space. They turned out too dark though. I had my husband hold up my big piece of foamcore for a reflection board but they were still all way too dark. I posed her next to a south facing window at 2:30 p.m. on a sunny day. I finally got the best photo taking her downstairs and opening the south facing french doors to get enough light. This time I stood back and used the zoom so I wouldn't get so much distortion in her face.

I am really overwhelmed with the help I am getting on this project. You have both absolutely made my day! Thank you both so much,

Joan

P.S. I don't think this is the best I can do but I'm getting closer with help. I think it's too late in the day because there doesn't seem to be enough light. Also, the light is coming from the right instead of the left, like I am more using to seeing. I wonder if this matters, next time I'll try having the light come from the upper left so the painting will 'read' from left to right.

Too much shadow
 

Hmm, after rereading the suggestions above, Linda, your post talked about 1/4 shadow and 3/4 light. But, it looks like I've got the opposite of that! I've got 3/4 of her face in shadow with this pose :bewildere . Did I miss something? I will recruit her again tomorrow for more photos. Lucky for me (not her) she has finals so she'll be home early.

Joan

Joan, I was trying to get for you a natural light, light/shadow composition equivalent to what Chris Saper achieved in her post "Brown Shawl", linked here.
She used artificial light in her setup; you may not have a strong enough light source from your window for this, at least at the time of the day that you took the photo. Maybe a different time of the day? Or a different room of the house? Maybe you should move the camera a bit as well as having your model move? How about cutting down all the bushes in front of your house? :D

Where is Mike McCarty when you need him? :exclamati

The goal here is not necessarily to find a "formula", stock portrait pose which you will always use; rather, it's to come up with one very successful example of light management which you will therefore 1. succeed at painting a great "form" portrait, 2. feel justifiably self-confident about it, and 3. move on from there.

Lots to learn
 

Dear Linda,

[QUOTE=Linda Brandon]How about cutting down all the bushes in front of your house? :D QUOTE]

Actually I think we just might move, we have an excellent realtor. I'll tell her exactly what my requirements are and she can probably find it ;) !

Thank you for that post of Chris Saper's photograph. It's got me thinking again about an artificial light source.

I realize with natural light no two situations will ever be the same, but if I want to take a photo of a model, I need to have a better handle on the lighting situation. It's easy to call my daughter to this window or that window for three days in a row, but a client is different. I think it's a big deal for a client to get all dressed up and ready for a photo shoot, or have their child dressed up, and I don't want to have to call them back the next day and say I need more photos ;C . I realize I need to be much more professional. Even for my 'practice' portraits with the neighbors' kids, I don't want to have to keep calling them back or going to their house over and over again.

I just took a long walk with my husband and talked his ear off about all this and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to have a more constant light source, which I think means artificial lighting. Though I will keep trying to understand how to use natural light, but I need knowledge of both. It is ridiculous that it takes me days to get a usable reference photo when I could be starting on the next portrait.

I also think I should take the advice that I have read more than once on this forum and sign up for a photography class :( . I'll have to look at that as part of my education.

Well, I've talked long enough. I will try again with my daughter tomorrow earlier in the day and post a photo if I get a good one. I'll think positive!

Thanks again,

Joan

Garage!
 

Because the rooms in our house are on the small side I was having a hard time getting far enough away from my daughter to take photos without alot of distortion. That's when I thought about our garage. It's big and when I open up the garage door it's like a big window which luckily faces north. I think I got the classic 3/4 view, here it is:

Two more
 

Here are two more which I thought were good photos of her but I wonder if the shadows are prominent enough? The garage was great to work in (sorry about the junk in the background! Next time I need fashion some kind of backdrop). I could move myself and my daughter closer to the door (and light) or farther into the garage away from the light.

Last one
 

I took this one inside and I like the pose. I realize the camera is pointing down at her but I think it's kind of interesting. It would be a more ambitious portrait but it may be a good one for me to learn how to deal with more than just a head and shoulders. I could really enlarge it for details, plus I have my daughter right here so she could pose for me too.

Closer to the window
 

Here is one more that I had to share. Cynthia, I'm sorry for posting so many, I feel like you should send me a bill for all the extra space this is taking up :) . But this is helping me so much, thank you Cynthia for making this possible!!!

This is what I get when I ask my daughter to move closer to the window! We were having fun :) .

Thank you all, I look forward to your knowledgable input.

Joan

Joan,

The focal length is much better. I did not want to say to much, because your daughter could have, in fact, had a rather large nose. I can see here that she is perfectly lovely and her features are well proportioned.

Two problems:
A: The skin tones are still too dark. Are you metering for her face or the shirt? It is better to meter for the face and let the shirt white out. You can take the same pose and meter for the shirt. The problem with digital is that you cannot burn and dodge, like in the old prints. With standard film, your printmaker can balance the final print. With digital, the information on overexposed light areas cannot be restored.

B: Make sure there are no trees at least 35' (50' is ideal) from where you are working. They can cast a dreadful Kermit like glow to skin and fabric. I know this from bitter experience. When I was first starting out, I was painting a perfectly lovely lady in an evening dress. After hours of keeping the poor thing standing, I could not figure out for the life of me why she was so green. I was mortified! As it tuned out, the trees in my original studio happened to be only 10' from my window. As they were on another property, I had to move my studio to a south facing sun room. Actually, since I am in the Northeast, it has worked out fine.

Don't worry about the missing nostril. Is there some portrait prohibition against that? I haven't heard that one, but then again I have apparently not heard everything! I like that angle the best, but Linda's observation about the 3/4 light is a good thing to follow, especially at that angle. She needs the light more fully on her face. The best light for what you are trying to do is between 10 and 2:00. You photographed her too late.

Hope this helps!

Too dark
 

Dear Sharon,

Thank you so much for such a thoughtful response to my photos. I don't have any kind of metering device. After I took these photos I remembered reading somewhere that the model shouldn't be wearing a white shirt.

I can take (whatever it is in my digital camera, don't know the right word) to the printmaker and can't she lighten these up? Since I can paint the colors from life could she lighten them and then I could use the photos more for the form? Hmm, maybe that won't work. I read on the forum where one artist takes his photos in B&W and then paints the color from life.

Are you seeing green on her face? The ones taken by the garage have some trees up high over the edge of the driveway. Could this be causing the green?

Though I did take the first batch of photos late in the afternoon, the five posted above were taken between 11:00 -11:30 a.m. on a sunny day. I just don't know why my photos are consistently too dark. I just reviewed the photos from yesterday and they are all as dark as the ones I posted above or darker. I will buy that metering device you talked about above and that should at least tell me what I'm looking at as far as darkness/lightness. I also need to retake these with my daughter closer to the light.

Would you recommend against me trying to paint from these photos? I got some good poses but I guess I can do that again if I did it once.

Thank you again,

Joan

Joan,

It is very difficult to lighten up a face on a standard print as it loses color saturation, with digital it is well nigh impossible.

You probably have an automatic metering system on your camera and you obviously are using that. The automatic meters for both the dark areas and the light and reaches a mean. To hold the light area you are losing the medium tones. You have to learn to overide the automatic system and learn to work more in manual mode. You have to meter on the face and bracket ( different exposures) to capture the white. At this point don't be too anxious to make a picture, master your photo skills first. There are a lot of good books out there that would help.

Take these photos as a learning experience, I would find them too dark to paint with. Give yourself the best possible material you can, especially at the beginning.

Good advice
 

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for your honest advice, I will certainly take it. Learning how to take good reference photos will be my first priority when we get back from our vacation. I live within 1/2 a mile of two good camera shops, they should be able to explain things to me. And there's probably a lot of info on the internet, and . . . oh yes, the manual that came with my digital camera!

Joan

Joan,

If your camera does not have a spot metering system (check the manual, easy feature to use) try this:

Frame your daughter as you did before, half figure including the white shirt. Within the viewfinder, notice that the metering system has chosen the optimum combination of aperture and shutter speed for this scene. It might read something like 60 at 5.6. Next, zoom into your daughters face, eliminating the white shirt. Notice that the two numbers have changed. Make note of this new exposure combination. At this point you have effectively "spot metered" her face and the camera has given no consideration, except for reflected light, to the white shirt.

At this point you can do one of two things, first you could, while zoomed in on the face, press the shutter release button half way down and lock in this exposure. With your finger still halfway depressing the shutter release (if you release it will loose the exposure you want) recompose the scene to include the shirt and shoot the picture. This takes a little agility but with a little practice you'll get the hang of it.

Your second choice would be to place your camera in full manual mode and select the shutter speed and aperture setting indicated above when you exposed for the face only, then take the picture.

I agree with the above comments about your daughter needing more light on her face. This should make that happen.

Ah-ha!
 

Dear Mike,

Thank you so much for your post and the helpful information. I have pushed down the shutter release button half-way to 'hold' settings on my still camera but wasn't aware that I could do the same thing on my digital camera. And it's been so long I don't even remember what settings I was trying to 'hold' or capture with the still camera. I will have to see if I can get that to work.

I probably need to get some kind of metering device, if nothing else it would help me understand why when I look through the lens and see light, but then when I load the digital photos on the computer, they're dark. Well, it might not help me to understand it, but at least I won't be surprised by my dark images.

Mike, thank you again for helping me out with this. You have such a vast amount of knowledge when it comes to photography (obvious in your reference photos and all the help you give on this forum) that you have saved me untold amounts of time.

We're leaving town tomorrow but the first thing I will do when we get back is try out your suggestions. I'm glad I saw your post before I left and was able to answer so you wouldn't think your help went unappreciated.

Joan

Joan,

Every modern camera has a "metering device" built in. This is how it determines proper exposure for any given light situation. Exposure being the combination of two factors a) how wide the aperture is opened (aka f stop, this can range from 2.8 to 22 and many points in between) and b) how long the aperture is left open (aka shutter speed, ranging from full seconds to many thousandths of a second). Or in other words, how much light, and for how long. These two things combine to determine the amount of light which hits either the film, or in the case of digital, the chip. In very low light situations the aperture would want to open wide for a long time.

It makes this determination based on what it sees through the viewfinder, not necessarily what is in front of the camera.

Some cameras allow the viewfinder to be further separated into smaller "zones" such as, the middle 1/3, or in the case of spot metering, the center 5+-% of the viewfinder. When one of these zones is selected, only the lighting conditions within this zone is used to determine the exposure of the scene. There may be other calculus going on depending on the sophistication of the camera.

So if you can, through any of these methods described in this or the above post, explain to your camera that you would like to expose only for the area of the face, then you will get a proper exposure for that section of the viewfinder. Understanding that other areas of the picture may be either over or under exposed, but for your purposes, you don't really care.

In the following example the girl was standing in front of pure sunlight. If the camera were allowed to consider the entire frame it would have tried to balance all that light coming in and the result would have been a completely washed out face. Instead, I asked the camera to only consider the light on her face for exposure. This gave a pleasing facial exposure and completely over exposed the background, which was fine with me.

Phew!
 

Mike,

Thanks for jumping in with some great advice. I have a beautiful reliable FE2 Nikon which I only use on manual mode. It does not have too many bells and whistles anyway. It does have through the lens metering and I always meter for the face and bracket like ****, for the rest. My printmaker burns in the lights, if need be. I am so used to shooting in available light manually, it is hard to relay that information to someone starting out with different equipment.

As I understand nowadays that kind of printing adjustment is no longer an available option for digital. The exposure has to be right on the money. Any lights or whites, if they are washed out cannot be retrieved.

Thanks again,

This is what I've been told as well, although, I don't have any solid experience yet with my new digital camera.