Flying high
A care free childhood.
A care free childhood.
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Jul, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in the backyard of our house in Sweden on a late summer's day as our kids were just having fun outside. You don't always need go far to capture something beautiful, because moments such as this happen all around us everyday.Time
It was about 2pm in the afternoon that day. Our whole family (me, my wife Malin and our 3 kids) were enjoying our holiday time off and soaking every bit of warm rays we could get. In many ways doing what most people in Sweden this time of the year do. Summer season here is quite short so you have to make the most of it while it lasts :)Lighting
The sun had just come out from behind the clouds and despite it being a direct somewhat harsh light it really helped to give the photo some depth of contrast between the highlights and the shadows and it also helped me to freeze the motion by being able to use a high shutters speed whilst keeping my ISO nice and low to avoid noise.Equipment
This was shot with my Canon 5D mark III and the incredible 135mm f/2L prime lens which creates buttery smooth bokeh (background blur) whilst giving you a nice and sharp focus on your subject.Inspiration
My middle daughter Amy who is in this photo loooooves to swing and as I watched her enjoying herself the scene brought me back to the care free times of my own childhood, so I quickly ran inside the house and grabbed the camera to capture the moment. I asked my wife to give the swing some extra speed so Amy comes up higher in the sky to give the photo that "I am flying..." feeling. To me this capture really sums up one of the best things about being a kid: to be young & free. To laugh and seize the moment, not having to think about yesterday, today or tomorrow. Life has its simple yet profound moments and this was one of those.Editing
My normal workflow starts by importing the RAW file into Adobe Lightroom where I work on the basics of the image such as white balance, shadows, highlights and color. Once I am happy with those things I then consider if I need to bring it into Photoshop for some other more complex retouching. In this case as I took the shot my wife's hand which was pushing the swing was also visible in the frame, so to remove that along with any other small unnecessary distractions and really help the viewer focus on the feeling of fun and freedom I opened the image in Photoshop and cloned out the hand using the clone stamp tool to copy some of the surrounding sky. There were also some small branches of a tree peeking into the frame which were quickly removed by the healing brush tool. I did also warm up the overall toning of the image as well as slightly desaturated the red and magenta colors to give it a slightly faded vintage look for lack of a better word. Finally I finished it off with a vignette to further focus the eye on what's important: the girl.In my camera bag
That's a great question. If you asked me a few weeks ago I would have said my bag contains the Canon 5d mark III, 135mm f/2L prime and a 50mm f/1.8 prime. Today however I shoot with Nikon D750 and my bag also has the 24-70mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.8 as well as the excellent 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. But as far as equipment goes I would say that the quality and impact of our images has very little to do with the brand of our camera and everything to do with our creative vision, because the only limit is that of our own imagination.Feedback
If you wanted to capture a similar shot of your kid. I'd say make sure you are as low as possible to the ground. I started off by shooting standing up but quickly realized that I was getting the neighbor's house and trees into the background which was detracting from what I was trying to achieve. So I ended up belly down laying on the grass so that I can capture as much of the sky as possible and give the image this flying high feel. Anytime you have this much constant motion there is a risk of motion blur, so switch your camera to shutter priority and dial in a speed that will stop the motion. In this case I shot at 1/8000s. A wide aperture such as f/2 to f/3.5 will also help you separate the subject from the background. I normally shoot using back button focusing, but I was struggling to keep up with tracking the speed of the swing, so I stopped and observed for a few seconds to figure out where that moment of suspension is as the swing reaches its maximum hight. I prefocused the camera on that point and next time the swing appeared in my view finder I fired a burst of 4-5 shots. One of which was the image which you see here. Finally I would say the most important thing is to get out with you camera and shoot daily. Shoot, shoot, shoot. The more you do it - the better you will get!
