Wiggin Out: Adventures Outside: Look. . .BABY!!!

Here are some baby photos to please those who wish to see them. Not much to say, but I'll do a brief intro.

First off, a few random around the house shots. I rented a few lenses for Memorial Day weekend; one of which was the Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro (more shots from this later). These four shots were taken with that lens. I was also playing with flash trying to create a well exposed baby but a very over-exposed, almost white background. Personally, I really like it as it creates a very sharp contrast/focal point. Oh, one more thing. . .while the Canon 100mm f/2.8L is a FAST lens, taking a shot of a baby on the go is pretty damn difficult. (Andrew was 8 months old at the time--taken in May, 2016--and was starting to get the crawling bit down. Notice the little bruise on his left cheek? I think he was holding himself against a corner and lost his balance. . .yeah he started getting a lot of little bumps/bruises once he started getting mobile).

f/2.8, 1/125 sec, ISO 400 Flash (off-camera to back/left)

f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 400 Flash (almost directly behind Andrew)

f/2.8, 1/125, ISO 800, Flash (top left corner)

f/4.0, 1/50, ISO 800, NO Flash (different lens from others).

In late June we went to New Jersey to see my bro-in-law and his wife, for that trip I rented two lenses, the Canon 16-35 f/4.0L IS (more on this lens later) and the Canon 70-200 f/4.0L IS (similarly, more on this later). While thee we went to a park and put Andrew in his first swing! I wanted to try the panning technique to imply motion. . .these first few shots are that attempt. The idea is to slow your shutter down a bit so you are firing somewhere around 1/10 to 1/30 second and pan the camera so that you subject looks still, but the background implies movement. I also needed some reach because I wanted a pretty tight shot so these were taken with the 70-200 at 93mm. Finally, I needed a somewhat more shallow depth of field so didn't want to go beyond f/8.0ish so I knew I would need to use filters of something to slow the light down a bit. I played around a bit and it was too bright so ended up using a circular polarizer to cut the light by ~2 stops (I haven't measured that yet, but I should).

Also, these were taken in June of 2016, so about 1 month after the previous four shots (Andrew was 9 months old).

f/8.0, 1/15 sec, ISO 125

The next thing I wanted to do was play with depth of field; specifically, I wanted to see what type of depth of field I had at f/4.0 in the 70-200 range. I knew that I would be trying to freeze motion so I took off the polarizer to gain that 2-stops of light. The fun thing about taking depth-of-field shots while Andrew was on the swing was I could also see what the impact of distance from camera would have on depth-of-field as well.

f/8.0, 1/200 sec, ISO 400.
Note, I wanted slightly more depth of field
because I wanted Kyra somewhat in focus
(FYI: she didn't know she was in the shot)

f/4.0, 1/1600 sec, ISO 400
Note, he was much farther away so
more s in focus

f/4.0, 1/1000 sec, ISO 400
Very close which is why DoF is very shallow
I like the focus on the feet

Finally, here are some old-timey shots of Andrew and his great grandmother (95 years old, taken late June 2016). I played with the "nifty-fifty" for these shots (I wanted a really fast lens and would be about 7-10 feet so would get adequate DoF for portraits). I want everyone to notice the scabs on Andrew's head. During his (near to last) visit to the gym he decided to scramble out of his car seat and crawl over to the treadmill where he proceeded to headbutt the thing. . . babies. . .well, they ain't too smart.