Still learning and practicing...with me, myself and I

I have recently started to re-educate myself on the basics of shooting and editing. Always a student and always stuff to learn. I went back to my Shooting and Editing Course, with Amy and Jordan Demos.

The big learning this time around doing this course was to actually use the ExpoDisc. It’s a cool photography accessory designed to help you get a custom white balance as well as perfect exposure. I bought this gadget a few years ago when I first started the course, and felt it was too finicky and left it on my shelf.

Well…I have dusted it off and plan to use it for all my sessions. The colour tones are super consistent and the exposure is exactly what you want. I do still need to work on adjusting exposure settings when the ambient light changes, but so far…I am digging it.

Here are a few images I took before it hit 40 degrees Celsius. Not my temperature. At all.

The first thing I needed to find (to follow the basic rules of Amy and Jordan), is soft even light head to toe on the subject (in this case, me), and soft even light in the background. A bonus is a non-distracting background, but it’s not critical unless the background is actually the subject.

The hardest part about shooting in the summer, is to find soft even light in the background. Early in the morning it’s not too hard to find shade where you can look up and see sky (open shade), but it’s much harder to not find a sunny background.

So…I looked around. At 8am, all I could find that fit the priorities I was looking for was my garage door. With a little editing of the horizontal seams of the big door, it becomes a soft creamy white non-distracting background.

I could have, but didn’t, edit out any of my grey hairs. As a friend would say…”that’s my sparkle”. With everything going on right not, I’m not in a rush to head to the Beauty Parlour, but I sure would like to wake up and have all my grey gone. Maybe in the Fall I will get a refresh. For now…I will sparkle on.