Over & Wide - Children's Photography

Over the weekend I read this article on shooting wide open, which led me to checking out the author of the article, Audrey Woulard's, website.  Her work really inspired me, so after a little more searching around the web, looking for more information on her work and style, I decided to give it a go.

Mid morning I gathered up as many of my kids that I could entice into cooperating and headed out to the back yard.

I set my camera to vivid setting, used Kelvins for white balance, opened my 50 mm 1.8 to 1.8 and left it there.  I lowered my ISO to low and left it alone, leaving me to only change my speed, based on my exposure reading.  I quickly found that I needed to over expose slightly on the face to help prevent shadows.  Once in the computer there were a few images I needed to bump the exposure on some more.  Overall the photos came out looking like I wanted with very minor tweaking needed, mainly just crop and sharpen.  A few have a funky, green cast to them, from all the greenery in the yard, so I need to work on eliminating that in camera.  I also know that my 1.8 is not near as sharp at 1.8 as her 1.4 is at 1.6.  Next time I may bump my ap up a notch or two.  The other thing I did is use a white quilt on the ground to reflect light back into their faces, and create some catchlight in the eyes.