August 21, 2009 – Tennis portrait

1/400

f2.8

ISO 100

175mm

RAW

My two daughters have joined a tennis class, and couldn't be more excited. My wife, Rachel, has been asking for more photos of the kids, so I was happy to oblige. When I went to take the photo, however, I discovered a problem. There was a lot of stuff along the fence in the background that I didn't want in the photo, so I had to come up with a solution that would create a narrow field of vision.

I stood about 30 feet away from them and used a long telephoto lens (my 70-200mm f2.8L zoom lens) to focus on just them and leave out as much background as possible. I also put the camera in aperture mode (which should be an 'A' on your mode dial) and set it to 2.8. This wide aperture does a nice job in blurring out the background. So I had the best of both worlds — the long lens created a narrow field of vision that left out most of the clutter and the wide aperture made what was left (a bench) nice and blurry.

What also helped in the photo is most of the court was in the shade of some trees, so I had them stand in the shade in the middle of the court. There was plenty of ambient light coming down from the bright, open sky above them, which helped illuminate their faces and create a softer light that was void of harsh shadows.

Finally, a couple of more little tips. First, I knelt down to get the lens to their chest level. This subtle trick can really help make a difference in child photos. It also helped bring more of the fence into the background instead of the court surface. Second, I used the net as a sort of leading line into the photo. By placing my girls where they are, the net practically ends at them, which helps keep your attention in the center of the photo.

There's one huge thing I wish I would have done differently. It just seems awkward that my older daughter's hand is hanging limply in the middle of the photo. I should have asked her to hold the racket with both hands or drop her left arm down on the other side of the net. And while not as much of a problem, I probably should have had them swap sides and place the shorter one on this side of the net.