Between the weddings that marked the start and finish of my recent stay-at-home holiday, and before my trip to Wexford, there was time (and sunshine) in Cork to attend what has become an annual barbeque in the company of some of cousins, aunts and uncles. I had the camera with me, but with lots of food (including a chocolate fountain!) and company there wasn’t a whole load of photography going on. That’s not to say I didn’t take any pictures – I did, and I’ll share a couple of them here today and tomorrow. Capturing today’s picture of my niece Abbie reinforced something that has become more and more apparent as I take more and more candid portraits – the need to have a little patience.
Abbie was busy playing during most of the barbeque, but I spotted her at the blackboard one of the times I did have my camera out of the bag. She was busy writing about her adventures on the swing with her second cousins Cormac and Liam, or to put it her way:
“Leum and me and Cormik pay wit the sing”
I (somewhat naively) thought that I could subtly sit down on the grass along side her and capture a nice natural candid photograph of her as she wrote. Not so fast, uncle Rónan.
First time I lifted the camera she turned towards me with a big grin – a distinctly Abbie pose, but being just that – a pose – not what I was after.
Perhaps telling her that was a lovely smile was a mistake because attempt number two was a repeat of attempt number one.
So I gave up. Or at least, appeared to give up. I rested my camera on my lap and asked her about what she was writing. As she resumed her writing and started drawing a few hearts (what story isn’t complete without a few hearts, I say) I stayed talking to her, but also started playing with the controls of the camera, apparently looking back over photos, but actually tying down an aperture and shutter speed in manual mode based on what the camera had (in aperture-priority mode) given me for the first two photos.
With the exposure pre-set, Abbie distracted once again with her writing, and the passage of some time meaning she had forgotten a little about my presence, or at least that I had the camera, I was able to quickly lift the camera and capture the image you see above, much more in line with what I’d had in mind all along.
The lighting in the image is something I like about it – there’s a hint of a rim light helping to separate Abbie from the background, and that’s coming from the sun, which at this time of the evening was getting low in the sky, but partially obscured by cloud also which explains that soft ambient light that is lighting the blackboard itself, and indeed most of the image.
Oh bless – that is very cute!