Child Photography | I See The Moon
© 2010 Wazari Wazir | Black and White | Portrait Photography
As the title above, my son did see the moon even though this picture were taken during broad daylight in the late afternoon. It is normal to see the moon during daylight if the sky is clear and there is beautiful deep rich blue sky. He was busy playing on his own, running and never stood still, and only by gaining my son attention that I was be able to get this shot. Otherwise I can’t take a great picture, I mean a decent picture of him.
Taking this picture at a close distance with 50mm lens at f2.0 is not easy, I mean if there is a sudden movement, the potential to get a blurry picture is high. My favorite aperture for taking a picture of my son is f1.8 to f2.0, I rarely use aperture of f1.4 even though I’m using 50mm f1.4 lens, because the potential to get a blurry picture shooting at f1.4 is a bit high compared to f1.8 and above.
I got a lot of enquiries about how I shoot my son pictures, how do I get my pictures sharp when using big aperture, the truth is I take a lot of blurry out of focus picture, it just that I never share them, I only share a picture that is acceptably sharp or maybe sometimes I did share a blurry picture which I think have a moment in it, when the blurry movement become part of the story that I want to tell, I will share it, even though it is blur. The tricks to get sharp picture with open wide aperture is to use fast shutter speed, 1/100 and above and for this picture I use 1/250 at f2.
Personally for me, photography is about capturing moment, it is about sharing a picture and telling stories, if we can tell a story with tack sharp image and the message get across, it is a beautiful picture in term of technicalities perfection but if for some reason we did not mange to get super sharp picture, maybe we captured a split second moment that just happen in front of our eyes without we ever ready to change our camera setting and the result is blurry picture but yet the subject in the frame is still recognizable, then I think it is still a good picture.
You don’t need razor sharp picture to tell a story, unless you are shooting fashion show or commercial shot where usually every tiny bits of details matters because they want to sell things and people need to see clearly where they put their money. Maybe you think it is ironic why I’m writing this since most of the time I share a sharp picture here compared to blurry one.
I know what you mean, it is about choice, but my point is, great picture is not all about sharpest image, it is about capturing moment and telling stories with it and when looking back at this picture maybe in the next couple of years ahead, I can tell my son what he is looking at, the moon is too tiny to be visible inside my son eyes but this picture will make people wonder, what is my son looking at and I will say, the moon. My son did say “moon”, “moon” few times, you can see my son little big mouth that he is saying something, that is “moon”, “daddy, daddy, moon” while pointing his little finger towards the sky.
