friday facts: find the sweet spot

Sometimes photographing inside can be a challenge.  I don't have a super-fancy camera, and I don't have any super fancy lenses.  For the record, I have a Nikon D3000.  Don't get me wrong, it was bought at a great expense to us and it has taken great family photos for us, too.  But I'm saving my pennies for the next camera for my bag.  And I'm going to be taking some classes, too.  (p.s. can I practice on you or your family?  thanks in advance) 

Ok, back to taking pictures inside.  There's not much I can do at night without better lenses/camera, but during the day I have found that my house has some sweet spots.  I particularly like the light that comes in the afternoon on the west side of our house, but the morning light might work better in your home depending upon how your house sits, or if you have trees that cast shade on your home.  Phew, run on sentence!  We have a lot of windows on the west side too, which helps.  But I have recently found a new favorite sweet spot.  You've already seen this picture I took of Fletcher, but let's look again.  What's great about this flash-free (of course!!!) photo is that it looks like he's being lit from below and above, just like in a photo studio.

You can see why the light is so great in this picture of Rowan.

{wearing mama's vintage top}

See the light that is cast from the window onto the floor?  That's doing the job of lighting from below.  The light from the window is lighting up her face, and the light bounces off the floor to light her from below.  Free studio lights!  But proceed with caution.  It's hard to get a baby to stay where you want.

So you don't want the subject to actually get into the light that is being cast onto the floor.  Obviously.  You might end up with a really ugly foot in your picture.  And a dog body coming out of your baby's head.  Not to mention the rainbow on the baby's face.  If you have a photo editing program, you can try and fix this, but why bother?  Scoot that baby back, pull that foot out of the frame, shoo the dog away.

Here's another I took the other day in the same spot.

I probably should have gotten lower in this picture so she didn't have this big head-little body problem.  The dreaded lollipop head.  Ah, hell.  Let's throw in one more from the sweet spot.

{Rowan: all teeth and eyes}

I would like to insert here that I am not sharing this knowledge with you because I have an extensive knowledge of photography.  I am just learning from trial and error, and when I find something that works for me, why not share it with you?  This trick will work with any camera, really.  Trust me.  Find your sweet spot.