Goals and Lessons

One thing photography books and articles mention often is to never use your on-camera flash.  It makes skin tones look flat and causes harsh light and strange shadows.  But... if your subject is in poor indoor lighting, you don't have the budget for an off-camera flash, you can't figure out how to bounce your flash with a business card, and your subject keeps moving, this is what you get:

Cute, blurry babies

Or so dark you can't even see the baby

Even when brightened in iPhoto, this is the best you get

I would really like to get some shots like this that look good!

So I am planning to get a flash and learn how to use it.  But in the meantime, I just ordered a flash diffuser that goes over my on-camera flash.  It should allow me to use the flash without too much craziness.  It should be a good step for me now.  It's supposed to arrive next week.

Another thing I have been paying attention to is my white balance.  It is taking some getting used to when it comes to remembering to adjust this setting and remembering which one to pick but it is really improving my pictures.

This picture of my niece Daphne was shot in Auto White Balance.

This one was in Shade White Balance.  It "warms" up the tones and makes her skin tone more realistic.

More action shots I want to improve.

After this photo shoot, I fiddled with my camera and realized my Auto ISO was capped at 800.  So just by upping the ISO to 1600 (which wouldn't be great if I wanted to print out the pictures), I was able to get some better stills of the girls moving around in the low light of my bedroom.