Studio photography : Improvising on lighting setups
Declan in the studio. This kid, only 8 years old, brought the suaveness and confidence of James Bond to the photo session. It was quite a treat to work with someone so young, but who had specific ideas of how he wanted to present himself, to the extent that this was somewhat of a collaboration.
camera : Sony A1 (Amazon / B&H)
lens : Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM ii (B&H / Amazon)
lighting: lots of Profoto gear of course. See the description below for the setup. Read more inside...
Studio portraits of children - Lighting and textures
Going towards the brighter, less moody way of lighting children's portraits, as shown here - dramatic portraits of kids - I went with the parents' request with how they wanted this 3 year old's portraits to look like. I therefore lit it differently, but still with (mostly) just a single light source. For my own portfolio, I added a texture to the background. More about the lighting and post-processing in a moment ...
The family stopped by the studio on their way to Chuck E Cheese's for this kid's 3rd birthday party. So there was Read more inside...
When photographing portraits of someone, we can only leave so much up to serendipity. Deliberate action produces deliberate results. While things don't always work out to plan, having a plan helps propel things in a certain direction.
With that, we need to be able to pre-visualize the photographs we want. We need to shoot (and use light) with purpose. Even if you are just experimenting and playing with your camera and lighting, you will fare better if you have some intended result in mind. Always that question in mind - what is it Read more inside...
The Nikon D810 (affiliate) is a camera that surprised me for how much I liked using it. The high resolution of this camera was a drawback for me initially. But it had very responsive AF. Also, super-crisp images because of the improved sensor and due to the lack of the anti-aliasing filter. Ergonomics. (I have big hands.) But I didn't anticipate that I would love the D810 as much as I do. For a long while though I kicked against the idea of using a camera with a very high resolution. But then the Nikon D810 convinced me. There's a story Read more inside...
Simple lighting setup to photograph kids indoors - Bounce flash!
Meet Jack. He's 1 year old. We kinda photographed him just over a year ago with the maternity photo session with his mom and dad. But this is him now, for real. When Amy and Nick asked me to do a portrait session with him, we started off at their house. I wanted to grab a few candid photos of Jack happily playing before we set off to a nearby park.
Since kids scoot around all over the place, for me, it made most sense to just use on-camera bounce flash. Minimal gear - just the speedlight on my camera. And of course, Read more inside...
