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...
Outdoor photo session with kids, using off-camera flash
When I posted photos from this session on FB, there were questions about the lighting (and whether I had used off-camera flash), as well as camera settings. There were also questions about which lens I had used for this sequence - whether it was perhaps an 85mm lens. The surprise perhaps might be that this isn't out of the ordinary from how I usually approach a photo session - Checklist for portrait photography on location. A systematic way to make sure I get images that look really good.
With kids being their 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...
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...
