Experimenting with lighting

Here are a few pictures where I took the opportunity to experiment with the lighting settings of my Canon Ixus. Basically, I wanted to see what the difference with a flash photography picture and one using no flash photography would be. As one will see, the effects are quite dramatic.

In this first picture, I had Bryce stay at the Mall of Asia balcony, just outside Italiani's Restaurant, and this balcony does overlook Manila Bay's seemingly new hang out - where once it was just reclaimed land, now it teems with small restaurants - thus becoming a seeming walkway where many people love to hang around in. As you can see, Bryce is very visible - a perfect pciture, for all intents and purposes... however, one can hardly see the background, with eaception to the wonderful sunset effect, as can only be appreciated from the viewpoint of said bay-side area. Now doesn't that seeming orange sky look picture perfect too?

This next picture is the result of my not using a flash... rather letting the camera's aperture try to absorb more light form its background. Bryce can hardly be seen here, but take a look at the background. In this picture, you can see how alive the background really is - that it is not just a simplt barren background. This was obviously missed by the first picture, since the flash overpowered the background lighting.

Now, having seen the difference... is there a way to have both foreground and background equally taken? Maybe, but I still have to idscover how it can be done - also, I know of a technique... but one that will need more post-production effects via photoshop. However, this would entail taking two pictures - preferably with a tripod, so the camera doea not move, as I take one picture with flash, and another without flash... then combine the best of both.

I'll try this technique out some time. But as for this experiment, I'd say I learned from it.

What were we doing in Mall fo Asia? It was Barbie's birthday treat for her family, and we decided to celebrate via dinner - this happened June 1, a day before her birthday. Here are a few pictures - taken without flash photography. This first one is me, with Bryce and Dad on the background - and I must say that I'n getting better at taking pictures of myself by holding the camera at arm's lenght. Had this been with a flashbulb, I'm sure my face would have been over-exposed.

As you can see, when people move, a blurry effect happens. In this particular picture, tita Tonette was the victim of said blurry effect, while uncle Dict and Mommy had no such problem.

Here's the birthday girl herself, at the head of the table (she is paying for it) with uncle Ben and of course Bernice flanking her.

Just to make sure, I took another picture of tita Tonette (note: the tita and uncle labels are for the benefit of Bryce and Bernice), but as you can see, she still was quite animated in talking, hence the blurry hand. Oh well...