day six

It was a nice, overcast day (read: no rain), so I decided to try out a few new (to me) photography tips.  Overcast skies make for good lighting, since you don't have direct sunshine in your subject's face, so outdoors we went!  The grass was still soggy, but fortunately we have a large screened-in porch that lent itself very well to the task at hand, provided Liam didn't get too excitable and decide to fall off his scooting toy onto the concrete surface.

Today I shot in RAW format, which can increase file size by about 1/3 over a great quality jpg, I believe.  Not a huge deal at the moment, since I delete pictures off my camera daily.  This format gave me a few more options in Camera Raw, plus it seemed as if the sliders were preset to certain values.  I'll be reading more about this tonight.  I also played around with my camera's white balance, and set it to Cloudy.  I hear that some pros choose to shoot all outdoor shots in Cloudy mode, I may give that a try.

Here's Liam with one of his "new" Christmas toys:

Using kit lens 18-55mm at 18mm, Aperture Priority mode, f/3.5, ISO 100

I am very pleased with how this turned out.  I mean, yes, I could have cropped out my feet, but I actually liked how they appear in this photo.  The floor looks slightly textured, but the focus is correctly on Liam's face, and I even caught some catchlights in there!  I also like how the colors pop - and I did very minimal tweaking in Camera Raw, mostly just a little increase in exposure, and a smidge of sharpening.