Assignment 8: Portraits

Gabriel Aldaz: Sweet dreams

I really wanted to try a portrait by candlelight but many tries were unsatisfactory, due to poor lighting (short exposure) or motion blur (long exposure). I tried this photo of an unmoving object - my son fast asleep. I wanted to create a soft light, so I went with a candle placed to the right and a shutter speed of 6 seconds. I kept the depth of field shallow and tried to focus on his hand and facial features. I had to turn off auto focus (it uses a bright light that disturbed my son) and focused manually instead, looking at the results after each shot.

The key light is one candle placed to the right of the subject. There is no fill light.