Portraits/Expressions

A day visiting family out of town. These two wonderful toddlers were playing with the plant that the other kids had plucked from the tree fern. I knew I had a short period of their attention, so I showed them a picture from my phone on how I wanted them to pose with the fern on the front and side of their faces. They had to share so that was my way of them staying close together. I had squatted so I could better communicate with their level, and it made me giggle that they thought I wanted them to squat as well. They were mirroring my action and to the image on my phone. I purposely had them stand out from under the tree so I could get more light on them than having a shadow cast over them. I spend several hours with the kids using my Canon EOS 1D Mark ii with a 40mm prime lens. My settings set on my Canon EOS 1D Mark ii was f/2.8, 1/200 sec, ISO 50. All in Manual mode, auto white balance, RAW format, and Color Matrix 4ADOBE RGB in camera. I chose the 40mm lens because it’s small which allows for a slight portability even the Canon EOS 1D Mark ii is big. I converted the image into black and white. I did most of the edits under Mask in Lightroom. I decreased the whites and highlights on some areas that were distracting. I made everything else a bit darker so that the fern and the girls are noticed easier. I added a bit of exposure and increased the highlights on the girls. I used the content aware tool to remove a small plant that was on the floor. I went into the Black & White Mix and added +1 and -1 to the colors to help enhance the black and white picture. Then in the Detail, I increased the Radius and Detail. Under the Effects, I lowered the Highlight Priority so that I could create a vignetting. In the Calibration I and +1 to the saturation for the Red and Green. I finally cropped the portrait image.