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| From Flood!!!! |
Yikes!! So we had to nix that idea. Luckily the backyard of the family has a nice tree line so we were able to utilize the space there and creatively so! The owner has a daycare so there are lots of fun play structures in her fenced in yard but we were able to work around them and also use them as "props" for a few pics!
The problem, and the reason for my post's title was that the sun came in and out that day. It was a gorgeous day don't get me wrong, but we did the session at noon and there were lots of little clouds going over the sun and then leaving. Direct sunlight at high noon even in the fall is a little hard to work around when taking photos of people. You want them to come out natural looking, not pasty ghosts!! I found that when the clouds would cover the sun they came out great, but then all the sudden I would be snapping away and BAM the sun would blaze down. Sadly some of my best poses (you know, the ones where everyone was actually looking at the camera!) happened during these times of brightness. My camera was set to handle the cloudiness so those came out washed out looking. How do I fix it? I can't afford the fancy photo editing software at this time so I am using Picasa for all my needs. Picasa doesn't have an obvious exposure fixer at this time. These are the options for "Effects" editing:
Lots of fun stuff, but how do I fix a photo like this:
I scratched my head and even wanted to cry for a minute. This family is rightfully expecting their photos to look professional. I am a perfectionist and I also am afflicted with clinical depression. One way I have found to deal with both these issues is to try things that perhaps no one else would try. Sometimes those are the things that work the best. I clicked on several of these effects to see what would happen. I am not afraid with Picasa because things are so easy to reverse and the program saves a backup of your originals automatically.
The last one I tried is the one in the bottom right hand corner called Graduated Tint. It's description says "Useful mainly for skies". Well, there are no skies in my photos but let's see what happens anyhow.
Voila! It worked!! I kind of like how Picasa doesn't hold your hand completely through everything (perhaps they don't know all of the program's capabilities in every instance anyhow...it IS a Google program and they like you, the user, to explore!) so that you can make these reaffirming discoveries on your own.
The trick to using Graduated Tint is not to touch the color palette at all. Simply click on the icon, then use the "Shade" slider moving to the right to darken the exposure until it looks halfway normal.
You will also notice a target in the center of your photo.
What I did with this was drag it all the way down to the bottom of the screen to give the entire picture an even exposure change. The purpose of the target really is for skies. If you have a horizon line like this:
You see how the way the camera metered the light was based more on the darker lower half of the screen where the land and trees are. The sky looks washed out. This will only work if you can see SOME color in your sky. If you have one of those completely whited out skies it will really not help at all. What you do is put your target just above the horizon line and then start sliding the shade lever over. You will see the colors in your sky look more and more natural. Make sure you don't over do it though or it will look freaky. Then use the other slider, the Feather slider, to blend the bottom so that it looks like you never did a thing ;)
(Note: I also used the Shadows tool to bring out the colors in the trees, and the straightening tool to turn it slightly which removed the telephone wire in the upper right corner! Told you I am a perfectionist lol)
I hope this was useful for someone out there! I know it saved my butt :)
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