My first studio portrait session

Scott_Quier

Had my first paying portrait session the other day.

In the process, I encountered a number of hurdles I would never have thought of before:

• Had a hard time trying to control the two boys. My son was always well behaved (don't ask me how that happened, must be my wife's fault). The youngest one wanted to be the first to any particular spot so was trying to run everywhere. OK, running children and lightstands just do not mix. I eventually got them under control before anything got damaged, so I'm a pretty happy camper about that. It never crossed my mind that the kids would be anything other than respectful of my place. OK - the truth comes out - I'm nieve.
• The young lady arrived with a headache but didn't tell anyone. It wasn't until we where about 1/2 through that I finally tweaked to the fact that her lack of animiation wasn't nerves and that something might be going on. By then, it was just a little too late.

#1 The three of them, finally loosening up a bit.


#2 The older boy (by all of 15 months).


#3 She is something of a tomboy. In fact, I asked her about that and she readily admitted it. I still like this shot though. The lighting seemed to work pretty well.


#4 - The shoot was originally scheduled to be the entire family. Dad had a job pop up so it broke down to just a shoot of the kids. I decided I had to get Mom into the mix. I figured if I was able to produce one or two shots of her that she liked, she was more likely to pass my name around.


As always, C&C is welcomed/encouraged/requested.

TIA for looking and commenting.

JimW

Scott,

First, For your first studio job, I think you did really well. You got images, and no one got hurt! Great.

Next, the background. This is personal taste, but for me, it's a bit distracting. I like simple. Is the tree in the first photo or out? On the edge like that, it's a problem. Plus the background is too bright for my taste, reducing depth.

On the last one, maybe you could stand on a small ladder or apple box to get higher, forcing her to look up a little, which would reduce the neck area. Finally, some direction to get the expression you want on her face. Perhaps you might give her some adjectives to think about, or the name of a loved one. In portraits, what people are thinking shows. She looks like she's thinking about being photographed. Let her move perhaps. Maybe get her to warm up her face a little with a closed mouth smile. Just looks a little static.

Overall, great job for a first studio job. I remember my first one and it wasn't pretty!

Scott_Quier

Thanks - I'll work on your suggestions for my next shoots. I actually have 3 scheduled for December. Whoohooo

bigfredtn

Very nice pictures. The lighting is great. What type of setup are you using to take the pictures?

Scott_Quier

bigfredtn wrote:

Very nice pictures. The lighting is great. What type of setup are you using to take the pictures?

Thanks for the kind words. There are problems with the images that I will improve with my next client, but ...

• Background - flat gray paint on wall. Lighter colors are also gray, applied with various sea sponges in a random fashion. Makes for a 12' x 8' backdrop, the color of which I can vary with a light or two and some gel filters or other transparent colored film.
• Subject about 4' to 6' in front of wall - to help seperate them from the wall via short DOF
• AB800 camera left shooting through 42" white brollie, metered at about f/5.6
• AB800 on camera axis, shooting through a large (but not huge) softbox, metered at about f/2.8
• AB800 were approx 6' - 8' from the subject(s).
• Canon 580EX, on camera, set to manual, 1/128 power, aimed at ceiling, to trigger the strobes. Took a test shot with just the 580EX and was satisfied that it was contributing nearly nothing to the exposure. Set to manual, it did not fire the ETTL pre-flash and trigger the strobes pre-maturely. This allowed me to move about the studio without needing to worry about a sync cord attached to the camera. This turned out to be a good thing with the boys NEEDING to RUN back and forth - this limited the possibility of a problem.
• 2 stop ND filter on EF-S 17-55 or EF 85 f/1.8 (depending on the image - I swapped back and forth between them as I was working) to get the exposure back down close 2.8 to decrease the DOF.
• Camera position was anywhere between 5' and 10' from the subject(s).
• Shot in RAW, in PP decreased exposure another .5 stop as it was still just a bit over exposed - but nothing blown. Was "exposing to the right" to get as much data density in the RAW file as possible.
• Shot one frame with one of the boys holding a WhiBal card for WB correction - turns out the camera missed the WB by only 50 degrees and 2 points on the tint - nearly perfect.