The Pancake House

Ah,  last Sunday… it was so nice! After two weeks of rain, the sun decided to appear and we had a gorgeous hot summer day.  The best way to go around on those days is to relax, sip a cold drink and laugh.

We had visitors! My friend Alice and family have been here. Very relax, very nice and lots of laugh. I was quite happy with their visit. Alice is for me a special person. She brought me her wise words on a moment that I was really needing wise (medical) words. I still absorb a lot of her concepts and admire her a lot! But let's go through this story...

We didn't see or hear the children. They were too busy playing together.

Some people come to my house and still have very skinny fingers… they need to eat!

Here we see the happy group. And at this point I started to notice the patches of light...

The guests under a huge patch of light! See how his face is dark and the light casting on her forehead.

After watching those unfruitful patches of light. I got really upset and yet, I was still very lazy to get the reflector. I invited Mr. Shadow to help. In vain! There is no way a person’s body could act as a reflector or a diffuser. Maybe if using a white t-shirt?

After looking at the pictures I thought I should use this example to fix the concept: there is nothing worse to take pictures than a sunny day! I needed a model but all the boys in the house seem to have been possessed by Bokito’s spirit. No other option that to ask the tired and sweaty girl next door…

On the first example, I use a diffuser: light goes THROUGH the cloth. This forces the light rays to "bend" and they illuminate the subject on many different angles, diminishing the contrast among the highlights of the sun and the shadows:

Much better than the patches of sunlight of the previous pictures!   I still think there is too much shadow overall on the subject’s face. My next step is to put a white reflector (can be a white sheet) UNDER the subject’s face:

Result is still quite dark but at least, there is less contrast between both sides of the face. The reflection is much stronger against the right side of the face, where the reflector is pointing to. There is too much shadow on the left side.

The next step is to position the reflector AGAINST the sun, casting some light on the side of the face that is under the shadow. The light seems to be uniform on both sides of the face.

I did not correct anything else on the pictures. This is just an example to show that open sunlight, specially when mixed with shadow patches, needs to be avoided. Normally, people believe that a sunny day is wonderful to take pictures, but digital cameras don't like those huge contrasts between shadows and highlights.
 

Of course, this is not an excuse to not take pictures! If there is no natural reflector around (a t-shirt or a white sheet of paper can do the trick), just flash it... important is to catch the moment.

By the way, catching the moment is the priority of course! How could I miss my friend's visit?