ice cream cones after dark

My session with Lucas and his family went until the sun set. Shooting an hour before sunset is ideal - the slanting light is beyond spectacular (as you can see in the first two images).


But as the sun sets, it's hard using available light. I'm reluctant to use flash so I'm always trying to push my camera. Here, lit by the ice cream stand, Lucas is still looking pretty cute (though maybe a tad blurry, oops).


Just before this, however, I tried taking these two shots. For the camera nerds out there, I was at 800 ISO, f2.8 and 1/125 (which is as low as I dare to go with a long lens). They were still super underexposed and it breaks my heart, because these are such sweet images, especially the one of Lucas and Stacey. I pushed them in post-processing but they still don't look right to me. Oh well... all that grain is a style, right...? :)