What they Are
Sally baked her first batch of cupcakes for a paying customer this weekend and I wanted to document the event. When I wasn’t giving the boys my attention, I was grabbing as many shots as possible. I didn’t get a ton, but I got enough to celebrate with and I did some creative stuff.
How they’re Made
I used my new Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens for these shots. I set the camera to manual mode, shutter to 1/125, aperture to 2.8, and ISO to 400. I had my external flash attached and set to use TTL so that it could determine the proper amount of light needed. It was pointed towards the ceiling to diffuse the light and make it look natural. I’ve been using manual mode with an external flash for a couple of months now and it has made a huge difference in the quality of my indoor photos. Before, I would use aperture priority mode and the camera never exposed the images properly, choosing a slow shutter speed and dialing down the flash too much. Now that I use manual mode I get much better results. It is admittedly trial and error, but if you think your indoor shots suck, I’d reccommend trying it.
I kept the aperture at 2.8 and the lens zoomed out to 17mm for most of the shots so that I could get an effect that I hadn’t been able to get before: wide perspective with a limited depth of field. The 2.8 aperture kept the background blurred while the 17mm focal length and close focusing distance allowed me to add some cool perspective to the images. One of my favorites is the one with Sally blurred in the background doing her work while a cupcake is sharp in the foreground. It makes a very nice documentary-style shot. After a little bit of white balance tweaking in Lightroom they were ready for consumption. Enjoy.
Relatively Ambitious 