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Shooting Backlight – It can be at your own backyard

I took these photos during my trip to Labuan last year. I was really in love with backlighting during that moment. I took my family to search for a shooting location. We moved 1 place to another, but I couldn’t find the desired spot. So I decide to just forget about it and move on to do something else. On our way to the City, we passed by Jumidar Buyong, there was an empty lots for sale among the elite houses with the scenery that I was looking for. The challenge here is to deal with my background, the best is to have trees as background or at least any dark background. I have no choice but to raise my camera higher than my daughter’s eye level. Another challenge is to keep my daughter to stay in focus, she can’t stay still even for a few second. I managed to get few shot, the shooting time is less than 5 minutes, but 1 of these shot stays for months at my phone wallpaper. It was 1 of my favourite backlighting shot I ever made. Below is my shot sequence on my attempt to get the shot I intended.

1. I like the sun ray above my dauther’s head, this kind of ray I what I looking of in backlight, but the houses is distracting this shot.

2. I managed to get clean version of the shot. I raised my camera above my daughter’s eye level. I quite happy with the shot but I think I need to be closer as there are so much negative space in this shot. It actually works if we planned to put some writing on it.

3. I move closer, shot with lower angle than the previous image. I knew this was the shot I was looking for but I kept shooting few more angle. Back at home when editing, this image is the shot I like the most.

This image was shot using Nikon D90 with Nikkor 35mm 1.8 @ F2.8. What I learned is:

it is better to visualise the desired shot, this could be your starting point to plan your shoot
when you visualise, to find location is much more easier
if the location is not working, forget about it and find another location.
to pay attention on distraction at the background and its surrounding
if it doesn’t work at this angle, try another and keep trying
go out there and shoot!

“The most important lessons in life can never be expressed in black and white, but must be experienced” – Benny Lewis

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Posted in family, Headshot, life, Uncategorized

Child Photography | Backlight II

Sep 4

Posted by ShukurJahar

These are some additional images from previous post.

Actually, these are collection of my favourite picture i took recently. However, those picture has several issue that it doesn’t speak like the other 2 images in my previous post. Sometimes, we are there at the right time, good lighting and you can’t miss the shot. But capturing with natural light need you to be quick especially during golden hour as the sun can’t wait us to clean up things (background/foreground), to stage or to arrange certain kind of thing. Even though it has several weakness, it does speak. I didn’t missed the expression & mood. It is good enough to print it and put it in our family photo album

Child Photography | Backlight II

Posted in family, Human Interest, life, Uncategorized

1 Comment

Tags: available light, backlight, backlighting, borneo, child, children, hair light, indoor, kids, kudat, malaysia, natural light, north borneo, outdoor, photography, rim light, sabah, shukurjahar

Child Photography | Backlight

Sep 4

Posted by ShukurJahar

I can’t describe how i really love backlighting. When I travel around, I always scout the best place for backlighting. There are actually countless good backlighting spots between Kota Belud and Kudat. Most of the spots are located just by the road site, but we still need to enter locals compound to be able to get the best composition. Kota Belud offering backlight with paddy field and chances to get some nice reflection too. When i drive back and fourth to Kota Marudu from Kota Kinabalu, I always want to stop by and take some picture. Time constrains, bad weather and most often is to pass this route not at the right time are the reason why i still have no photo of it until today.

Anyway, these are some backlight shots i managed to get recently at Kg. Indrason, Matunggong.

Child Photography | Backlighting

About the pictures above, all are taken with available light. The trade off for backlighting is we can’t really preserve clouds detail and it will appeared clipping highlight in our histogram. Those images then post-prosessed in Lightroom with VSCO Film Pack 04 presets.

Posted in family, Human Interest, life, Uncategorized

3 Comments

Tags: adobe lightroom, astia, available light, backlight, backlighting, child, children, emotion, expression, film simulation, friends, happy, image editing, inderason, kids, kota belud, kota kinabalu, kota marudu, kudat, matunggong, natural lights, north borneo, photography, post-prosess, sabah, vsco film

Newborn Photography

Aug 13

Posted by ShukurJahar

I’ve been inspired to do this shot by a good friend mine, Wazari Wazir. He shared his secrets in his blog, and i just can’t believe he manage to get the images without any studio equipment. So today with the curiosity in my mind i took few shots of my newborn baby boy just to see whether i can get the same result with just minimal set-up.

The set-up is really simple not as hard as to keep our baby remained calm. It was very quick shot, not more than 2 minutes before our baby break the silence. You can actually “find” the newborn photography tips by Wazari Wazir in his blog (click here), just spent few minutes to dig in his blog to find the treasure. I’m pretty sure you will learn something along the way.

Posted in family, life, newborn

1 Comment

Tags: anak, available light, baby, bayi, black and white, child, children, family, isolate, kelahiran, kids, maternity, monotone. bnw, natural light, photography, portrait, shukurjahar, si kecil, si manja, toddler, velvet, window light

VCSO FILM 04 : SLIDE

Aug 9

Posted by ShukurJahar

VSCO film tools has long been creating what we believe to be the best film emulsion presets for digital photographers. Last Wednesday, the company announced Film Pack 4: Slide, a new pack of emulators that help photographers recreate the look of various slide film stocks in digital photos. It’s “the most authentic film emulation available,” the company says.

The pack includes 11 different films (with variations of each), and a total of 117 presets.

The software is available for Lightroom (4/5) and Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop (CS6/CC). VSCO Film Pack 4 also brings some other, more general improvements to the plugin. It features more custom camera profiles, including Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus and Leica models, and an increased range of blues and blacks for VSCO Tools.

You can get VSCO Film 04 here. The normal price is $119, but you will get 25% discount for limited time. As an owner of previous VSCO Film packs, they offered 50% off until 20th August 2013.

Here are some result of using VSCO Film 04.

Fuji Astia 100F-

Kodak E100G HC

Fuji Fortia SP

Fuji Provia 400X+++

Posted in lightroom, Uncategorized

I Love Backlight

Feb 20

Posted by ShukurJahar

I’ve been fascinated by tons of backlight photos over flickr & 500px users. In my opinion, backlight images creates more impact on the subject mood.

The backlight can be a natural or artificial source of light. When artificial, the back light is usually placed directly behind the subject. Backlighting helps to provide separation between the subject and its background. Backlighting will cause the edges of his or her hair to glow if he or she has fuzzy hair. This gives an angelic halo type effect around the head.

For the image above, i wasn’t planned to shoot that day until we made a stop at local grocery. While waiting for my wife to buy some stuff at the grocery, i realised that there is good quality of light from the sun and i see there’s a good spot just in front of the car park. It takes just second for me to ask my daughter to just stand at the point i want it to compose. I took several shots and it came out this image which is the one i’m satisfied the most, although it there was distraction from the leave in front with the lens flare. The catchlight on the eyes added bonus as we actually in the shade area. We couldn’t stay longer as the mosquitos keep on dining at my feet. The pose of my daughter was not posed by me, it was her spontaneous pose while i’m keep on shooting.

Posted in Headshot, Human Interest, lightroom, Uncategorized

1 Comment

Tags: backlight, backlighting, child, children, iffah, kids, portrait, portraiture, sun