Photo Class: Shed a Little Light on the Subject

A picture from last summer, showing Elly in backlight.
It was taken with automatic everything
and her face is quite underexposed.

Well, maybe not ON the subject, but behind it. The assignment for today's online photo class was "Backlight," and the challenge was to take a photo where the strongest light is behind the subject.

It is tough to do without the subject being underexposed or washed out by the light. Yeeks. And I took a whole stack of pictures before I finished reading the instructions and corrected my light metering to "spot" metering.

But the biggest challenge may have been the utter lack of sunlight recently. So, I had to make do with artificial light.

Another challenge: unwilling subjects.

I think we can all agree that this man is
testifying under duress.
[Ve haff vayssss of makink you talk.]
f/3.5, 1/20, ISO/1600, metering mode/pattern
This was taken before I did a more attentive read of the instructions.

Well, he was "willing." In the same way that I am "willing" to get up before 09:00 on the weekend.

So I settled for still life. And I re-read the instructions. Second batch was much better. This one is SOOC (Straight Out of the Camera). [Not sure why they drop the T. Poor thing probably feels rather rejected.]

f/3.2, 1/25, ISO/800, metering mode/spot
Doesn't the little bird look like she's going to peck those pearls?

And I like this crop of it.

On a side note, since I knew that the lesson after "Shadow" was likely to be something about light, I took some pictures while I was on a whirlwind trip to Toronto earlier this week.

f/2.8, 2s, ISO/100

Can you tell which setting I forgot to change from my earlier shooting in the afternoon? Yup. ISO. D'oh! But that's not bad for a two-second exposure. I used a balcony railing to keep the camera as steady as I could.