There is a term in photography called “High-Key”. The goal of a high-key photo is to overexpose a picture artistically and intentionally by reducing the overall contrast and “smoothing” out the image. This is can be achieved a few ways. How do you think I set my camera for the following shot? (The photo is completely untouched)

What you don’t see in this shot is that behind Caleb is a full height sliding glass door with partially open vertical blinds. The sunlight was hitting this west facing side of the house in the early afternoon and it was very bright. I used my Nikkor 50mm lens and metered* my camera for the darkest point in the picture which was Caleb’s bib and for good measure opened my aperture a step further all the way to it’s maximum of f/1.8. My ISO was set to 200 for maximum quality and my shutter speed was 1/100th of a sec which is just fast enough to stop a calm baby’s motion. Notice how the light has somewhat of a ethereal quality to it? That is because of the nature of how the camera “sees” light. All of the areas that are “bleeding” light are lighter than the area I metered and thus are naturally overexposed creating a softness to the picture. This is a beautiful way to take photos of babies and young children as well as pregnancy photography.

*For questions regarding the technical terms feel free to post comments and I’ll answer them to the best of my knowledge or find out the answers for you!