Capturing The Sky - Family Photographer

I've been learning photography for almost 5 years now.  Last year I noticed that I came up with way too many blank white skies in my finished images.  This year I'm actively going to attempt to capture the natural detail of they sky in my finished images.  There are actions (plug ins) you can purchase of puffy, perfect beautiful clouds.  You add these in during the editing process.  I've considered purchasing these but haven't yet.  This time, I captured the image with different exposures.  Under and over exposing to capture the detailed sky.  It's rather difficult to capture a detailed sky when you are correctly exposing your subject.  Often the sky is over exposed and whites out.  To capture a detailed sky you have to under expose (darken, almost black out) your subject and measure the light according to they sky which is often very bright.  Then you merge the over exposed and under exposed images in Photoshop. That's what I did to get the image that I wanted below.

I'm going to challenge myself to capture a detailed sky with every outdoor session this year.  This is going to come with difficulty at first.  There are a lot of things to consider and my nephew below was very patient with me (okay... kinda patient with me).  I'm sure I'll make mistakes and it will take practice to do this quickly during a session.  This challenge will allow me to continue to learn and grow as a photographer.

Say cheese you beautiful sky... here I come :)
       

Image on the left is over exposed sky to get the details of the grass (I wanted a silhouette effect on my subject so he is under exposed).  Image on the right is way under exposed grass and trees, correctly exposing to the sky.  Image in the middle is the merged image (same as the one above).

Enjoy more communion pics of my handsome nephew.

Spring is right around the corner if you would like your own personalized outdoor family session, including an attempt at capturing the beautiful sky above you contact me at: angelclarkphotography@gmail.com