Family Portrait - Endview Plantation, Newport News

Travis

On Thursday, I received a call asking if I was available on Saturday to shoot a session with a father and his two sons. The oldest was coming into town for the weekend and this was the only opportunity they were going to get and the only time they could do it was between 1:00 and 2:30. They wanted something extremely casual - shirts untucked, jeans, ... I agreed and then found out that they lived on the Pennisula (yes, I had to venture into Scott's territory!!! :wink ) He asked if I could find a location and they would meet me there. Not knowing the area, I ran through a few historical sites and decided that the Endview Plantation showed some promise. I have to hand it to them and my assistant Kristy for toughing it out - it was 90 and miserably humid with the occassional rain shower moving through. Did I mention it was 1:30??? You know how much I love doing portraits midday??? :rofl Anyway, here a few from the session. C&C welcomed as usual. Thanks for looking.

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Llywellyn

Oh, really nice job overpowering the sun with your flash--least that's what it looks like in a few of them. 2, 3, and 4 are my faves (maybe 2 the most since that one manages to eke out a hint of smile from the younger (?) son). Very nice shots of some handsome men.

adbsgicom

Nice job. The younger brother was a tough one to get to smile. Here's my sense on them.

1. The stairs are sloping up due to your angle. Also they feel very far apart, and the younger bro's legs look very long and his torso very short, esp. compared to the standing brother. This was my least favorite of the bunch.

2. Very pleasant. I violated the "don't cut off hands/feet" rule but I didn't really notice until I looked a second time. The younger brother has a bad nose shadow that the others don't. He actually seems to have this problem in several. This is one of my favorites.

3&4: Lighting is nice. The older brother's head position doesn't work for me, but I can't say why. Sorry.

5: My other favorite of the group. I like the skin tones here a lot. It may be a bit underexposed, though.

6: Nice picture. The eldest has the head tilt going again that I didn't like, but that may also be all about who he is, so... I think they could have been a bit closer (and still had sepration) and then you could have been a bit tighter. Also, I think they should have had their hands in the same pose, or gone very different.

Overall, nice job, esp. mid-day! Me thinks these are all better than what I would have produced.

Travis

Llywellyn wrote:

Oh, really nice job overpowering the sun with your flash--least that's what it looks like in a few of them. 2, 3, and 4 are my faves (maybe 2 the most since that one manages to eke out a hint of smile from the younger (?) son). Very nice shots of some handsome men.

Thanks Kerry! The youngest was a challenge to get the slightest inkling of a smile out of. I really hate having to overpower the sun when dealing with groups. Individuals are fairly easy but using a single off camera flash for the group is a little tricky.

Travis

Thanks for the in depth critique. I appreciate it!

adbsgicom wrote:

Nice job. The younger brother was a tough one to get to smile. Here's my sense on them.

1. The stairs are sloping up due to your angle. Also they feel very far apart, and the younger bro's legs look very long and his torso very short, esp. compared to the standing brother. This was my least favorite of the bunch.
- Good eye - I didn't bring my ladder with me. Not were they on the stairs but I was also shooting from a downhill slope. Next time the ladder is going with me.

2. Very pleasant. I violated the "don't cut off hands/feet" rule but I didn't really notice until I looked a second time. The younger brother has a bad nose shadow that the others don't. He actually seems to have this problem in several. This is one of my favorites.
- the nose shadow on the younger one did appear in most and it didn't seem to make much of a difference where I placed him in relation to the flash. Hands/feet rule was one of the first things I thought of when I saw it but I couldn't crop it without cutting off someone else and I really liked their expressions.

3&4: Lighting is nice. The older brother's head position doesn't work for me, but I can't say why. Sorry.

5: My other favorite of the group. I like the skin tones here a lot. It may be a bit underexposed, though.
- I'll go back and take a look at the exposure.

6: Nice picture. The eldest has the head tilt going again that I didn't like, but that may also be all about who he is, so... I think they could have been a bit closer (and still had sepration) and then you could have been a bit tighter. Also, I think they should have had their hands in the same pose, or gone very different.
- this image was actually a test shot that I ended up liking. go figure. I did shoot a few with them tighter together but none of them really worked for some reason.

Overall, nice job, esp. mid-day! Me thinks these are all better than what I would have produced.

Again, I really appreciate the input

divamum

Wow. 1.30????!!??? clap Amazing job. I like 2,4,5 the best.

Can you explain to us lesser mortals how you "overpowered the sun with flash"? I think I understand how this might work in theory, but I'm not quite getting how one would actually achieve that without overexposing, even in the shade.....

Travis

divamum wrote:

Wow. 1.30????!!??? clap Amazing job. I like 2,4,5 the best.

Can you explain to us lesser mortals how you "overpowered the sun with flash"? I think I understand how this might work in theory, but I'm not quite getting how one would actually achieve that without overexposing, even in the shade.....

Thanks Diva,

I'm sure there are variations out there but this is how I approach it....

1. Set camera to full manual

2. Set the camera shutter speed to 1/250 (highest sync speed for my SB-900, some others only sync to 1/200)

3. Turn the flash off and take an exposure reading of the scene using just sunlight to determine the aperature setting.

4. Turn the flash on full power and fire a test shot. This is where you will need to chimp a little. The key here is that the shutter speed controls the amount of flash exposure while the aperature controls the ambient light exposure. If your subject is to overexposed, adjust the power of the flash by decreasing it a stop or more. If your subject is underexposed, drop your shutter speed down.

For example say your initial ambient reading was F8. You set the shutter to 1/250 and fire the flash at full power. Subject is over exposed. Drop the shutter speed to 1/200 and shoot again. Repeat until you hit the balance that you are looking for between your subject and the ambient.

Now to play some... keeping your shutter speed the same to maintain the proper lighting on the subject, change your aperature to underexpose your ambient. Say the perfect mix is f8 at 1/125. Changing the aperature to f/11 will underexpose the ambient and depending on the background, will cause the colors to increase saturation.

In full blown direct sun, a small flash unit still may not be enough to light your subject offsetting the sun; however, in most cases it will allow you to control the harsh light.

There are some great videos out there on the subject. I recommend the Onelight video. It goes into far more detail including flash to subject distance, falloff, etc.

Hope this makes sense.

divamum

Thanks for that, Travis! I need a fully bright day to try it out - I went outside and played, but it was jussst overcast enough that it wasn't really a decent time to experiment.

Presumably this won't work all that well if you want to use a wide aperture... I mean yes, you can get a decent exposure (especially with high speed synch), but it will defeat the point of cutting the ambient by stopping down (?)

Scott_Quier

Travis wrote:

The key here is that the shutter speed controls the amount of flash exposure while the aperature controls the ambient light exposure.
Hope this makes sense.

Doesn't make sense to me. I may be confused, but if you are holding your shutter speed to something equal to or slower than 1/250 and your flash completes it's pop (even at full power) in a 1/1000 or faster, how are your controlling the flash exposure with the shutter speed? Like I said, I may be confused but I don't see it happening.

Thanks

adbsgicom

Scott_Quier wrote:

Doesn't make sense to me. I may be confused, but if you are holding your shutter speed to something equal to or slower than 1/250 and your flash completes it's pop (even at full power) in a 1/1000 or faster, how are your controlling the flash exposure with the shutter speed? Like I said, I may be confused but I don't see it happening.

Thanks

Scott, I think you are right, shutter controls ambient-only and aperature controls both. If you dial down aperature then you limit all light coming in. If you dial down the shutter (because the flash is so fast) you only change the ambient.

Scott_Quier

adbsgicom wrote:

Scott, I think you are right, shutter controls ambient-only and aperature controls both. If you dial down aperature then you limit all light coming in. If you dial down the shutter (because the flash is so fast) you only change the ambient.

This has been my experience and everything I've read also indicates this. But I like to leave open the possibility, remote though it may be , that I could be wrong about something. And, the probability that Travis knows something I don't is 100%.

divamum

Scott, I wondered this too, particularly since isn't "dragging the shutter" how you let more ambient in if you want it?

That said, even in yesterday's cloud cover, playing around with more extreme fill-flash was an interesting experiment.

Travis, look forward to your responses to this if you have time!

::scuttles off to google onelight etc and bone up on this::

Travis

Busted... I shouldn't type messages while on conf calls. It should have said the shutter speed controls ambient...... Sorry to confuse. My thinking was totally off track and I need to rewrite my instructions when I get a second to think clearly...... Simply reverse everything I said....

jeffreaux2

Nice work Travis!

heatherfeather

Oh Phew.:whew

I was scratching my head and thinking how much I still had to learn. (I am well aware I have a lot to learn but this was making my head spin.)

By the way... It doesn't look like 1:30 light at all. It looks fantastic! Ya done good. Some how they look all masculine even with the flowering trees.

Nicely done.