A Boy and His Truck

While I was visiting my parents, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to try to get a portrait of my middle child.  Once upon a time, my father made beautiful wood crafts.  He has this one wooden truck that he made by his own hand.  From start to finish.  By that, I don’t mean he used a kit… I mean he had blocks of wood to start and this truck when he was finished.  He is amazingly talented if you ask me.

I thought it would make a lovely and meaningful prop in my portrait of my boy.  Since my father hasn’t relinquished the truck to any of his eleven grandchildren yet, I thought I’d at least get it in a photo just in case it doesn’t end up in my household.

I dressed my sweet boy in some simple but nice looking clothes and took him to the front porch.  My mother has some nice wicker furniture out there, the brick house is a nice textural back drop and there is shade but lots of natural light.  Sounds like a photographer’s dream, right?  Well, I made a few mistakes and I’d like to share.

Can you see how crisp and perfect the chair looks?  Even the brick looks like it’s in focus.  Yet the fair skin of my boy along with his clothes appears to be slightly out of focus or over exposed or something.  I’m not exactly sure what happened here but I’m going to take a guess.  I think that my camera used it’s "brain" to make sure that the majority of the portrait was properly exposed and thus the chair and the wall were what it focused on instead of my subject.  When I was taking this photograph, I allowed lots of space in order to allow some cropping room.  I think that may have been my error.

Now this second picture has him in focus, the chair mostly in focus and the wall behind him slightly blurred.  I let my camera make the decisions and this is what it gave me.  A nice portrait, but my heirloom prop is not in this one.  Still, it’s nice.

For this one… I used my handy dandy new (fake) reflector to bounce some light back into his face.  I had it off to the left of the photo under his right foot.  I didn’t have it angled quite perfectly because you can see the shadow on his right eye socket.  But still, his right cheek wouldn’t be illuminated at all if I hadn’t used the reflector.  I’m happy to be practicing.  Someday, I’ll master all this stuff.  At least it’s getting better.

No reflector here but it’s still my favorite – I think.  I  like it.  I wish the truck was more visible in it’s detail.  The reflector would have helped with that.  Still, there is something about it that makes me happy.  What do you think?