{"id":34566,"date":"2016-03-28T23:44:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T03:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=34566"},"modified":"2018-11-25T02:04:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T06:04:52","slug":"studio-portraits-of-children-lighting-and-textures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/studio-portraits-of-children-lighting-and-textures\/","title":{"rendered":"Studio portraits of children – Lighting and textures"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Studio portraits of children – Lighting and textures<\/h1>\n

Going towards the brighter, less moody way of lighting children’s portraits, as shown here –\u00a0dramatic portraits of kids<\/a>\u00a0– 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 …<\/p>\n

The\u00a0family\u00a0stopped by the studio on their way to Chuck E Cheese’s for this kid’s\u00a03rd birthday party. So there was excitement, and it was all a little too overwhelming for him. We started off with group portraits of the four of them together – mom & dad, and his baby brother. Then we progressed to the portraits of the birthday boy by himself. I didn’t want all the grown-ups to call him from every direction to “look at the camera!”. That never works – kids will look at the person talking. When there are multiple people calling and giving instructions from every direction – it just doesn’t work.<\/p>\n

So I had his mom right behind me, over my shoulder where I was sitting on the studio floor, to talk to him to get his attention. When it seemed like he was fine with being there, I had his mom join everyone else on the living-room side of the studio. So it was just me and him, and I could talk to him about stuff. Kid’s stuff. No, he doesn’t like Sponge-Bob Square Pants. He loves dinosaurs and even roared a few times like dinos do. Gradual steps – not too fast, not too slow – just right, to have his attention, and not have him feel overwhelmed, or alone. With that, we got several sequences of lovely portraits of the little guy.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tThis screen capture of the layers used in Photoshop, will reveal what was added and changed to the original image.<\/p>\n

I started off with a bit of skin retouching, cleaning up a few small marks and boo-boos. Kids tend to bounce around and get some scuff marks – all part of growing up. I clean those marks up with the Healing Brush.<\/p>\n

Then I extended the box, copying part of the box from the right-hand side from the un-cropped image.<\/p>\n

To bump up the contrast, I added an Exposure Adjustment Layer. I don’t change the Exposure with this layer, but I change the mode. I usually have this as a Soft Light layer, but this time I had it as an Overlay layer. That works too.<\/p>\n

The white paper backdrop was too clean for my liking, although the parents wanted exactly that. So for my own portfolio, I added a texture. I changed the mode to Darken, and lowered the opacity. \u00a0\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

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The post-processing was very similar for this image, also edited for my portfolio.<\/p>\n

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Photo gear (or equivalents) used during this photo shoot<\/h2>\n

The lighting setup for the image at the top (with the white background),\u00a0was simplicity itself\u00a0– one light with a softbox on the background, the\u00a0Profoto 5<\/a>\u2019<\/a>\u00a0RFi Octa Softbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>). As described in this article –\u00a0working with a large Octa Softbox<\/a>\u00a0– it is one of my favorite light modifiers in the studio. A large light source that gives gentle light – but it can be swiveled to give more directional, but still soft light.<\/p>\n

For the second image, where the little boy is wearing blue, that was the only light source.<\/p>\n

For the image at the top, where he is sitting on the box, I had to add a second light to bring the white paper backdrop up to pure white. There is a way to use\u00a0the histogram to determine exposure<\/a> for the white background – I look at how the white\u00a0background spikes right on the edge of my histogram. Then white is white.<\/p>\n

The background\u00a0light was diffused with\u00a0the\u00a0Profoto 3.0<\/a>\u2019<\/a>\u00a0Octa Softbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate)<\/em>, and it was mounted on\u00a0a\u00a0Manfrotto 025BS boom w\/ stand & casters<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>), to keep a light-stand from being in the way in the background.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0studio flashes used were the\u00a0Profoto D1 Air 500 Ws studio\u00a0lights<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>).<\/p>\n

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Studio lighting workshop<\/h2>\n

If you are interested in learning more about studio lighting, including lighting for headshots, I offer\u00a0workshops on studio lighting<\/a>. The workshops will be held at my\u00a0studio space in NJ,<\/a>\u00a0and it has\u00a0a wide range of studio lighting gear to play with!<\/p>\n

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Related links<\/h2>\n