On my home page I state that even though I am primarily a flower photographer, I sometimes dabble in landscapes, seascapes, pet and portrait photography so I am kicking off my blog page with a post about photographing children in cotton fields. I have included camera information at the end in case you are interested.
The cotton around here is ripe for the picking (no pun intended)! Is that expression only common to my part of the country? I don’t know, but it seems like an expression that would be coined in an agricultural area. I live in the upper Mississippi River Delta and the land is exceptionally good for raising cotton. Those of us who have always lived here tend to take for granted the beauty of a field of ripe cotton. If we’ve lived long enough, we remember when school was out for a couple of weeks in the fall for “cotton picking”. That was a time when cotton was picked by hand, and it was “all hands on deck” to get the cotton out of the field. Thank goodness for modern agricultural equipment!
I had the privilege of photographing 2 pre-schoolers in a cotton field this past week. Neither of them had ever walked between the rows and seen an opened boll up close. At both shoots the children became mesmerized by the cotton and that allowed me to catch them off guard and get some images that reflected their personalities. I know it is always the gold standard to get images with eye contact but sometimes the best reflection of personality is captured when they aren’t paying attention to the camera.
The day I worked with Maggie, the sky was gray and the wind was blowing. That beautiful hair of hers was blowing and I think that was a bonus, but I had some post processing to do in order to overcome the awful light. I shot at a high ISO – 1000, in fact. I shoot with a Canon R5 mirrorless camera and I think it handles noise well. In Camera Raw, I adjusted the white balance to “cloudy” to warm things up a bit. When I moved the image into Photoshop, I made a copy and then went to Topaz Denoise AI to sharpen and remove noise. I think it did a great job. After that, I finished processing in Nik Color Effex. An extra benefit of shooting in a cotton field is that it camouflages any dust that might have gotten on the sensor. A child’s skin is almost perfect so very little post-processing is required.
The day I worked with Charlie, the light was much better. I did, however, adjust the light balance to “cloudy” when I loaded the image into Camera Raw. Again, very little post-processing was needed. As an aside, we had chosen a blue plaid shirt for him to wear but Charlie was determined to wear those brown overalls. Wow! It was the right choice. It was to Charlie’s photos like Maggie’s hair was to her photos!
This is my camera info: Canon R5 24-105 lens – I can zoom in and out quickly as the situation demands. ISO 1000 – I normally don’t use a tripod when photographing moving children and I am usually shooting late afternoon so the high ISO gives me sharp shots. I’ve been able to deal with noise and sharpening in Topaz Denoise AI. Aperture priority, usually at F/16