The Bird

Western Kingbird, guarding (?) its nest on a telephone pole, near my office.

Catchlights

Part of being a good photographer is being a good observer. What is the best angle? What is the best framing? What's in the background?  Is there a stray hair (or more)? Is the shirt bunched up? Is there a booger in your subject's nose?  

Catchlights. I wrote a few posts back that capturing catchlights was one of my next goals for portraits. You know, the light reflections in your subject's eyes that bring life to their eyes, and light up the whole photograph. I never used to consciously notice them. But there are several somethings that set a great portrait apart from an ok portrait. Catchlights is one of those things. Now that I know about them, I notice the reflections in people's eyes all the time. When photographing in natural light, it is pretty easy to capture catchlights. Just look for them. You'll see it.

Now my next challenge is to create artificial (?) catchlights with strobes. How on earth do you do that?? I can capture the round dot. Not what I'm going for.