I photographed my daughter in my office. Its a good size space but the usable space is about 10 by 7 foot. The challenge is to photograph my two kids in the space no bigger than a regular size room, in as many different ways that I can.
My wife works from home in the office so I spent the first few weeks of this crisis looking after the kids, while finishing a logo rebrand and creating a new website www.pictureit.ie with the help of Lucydesigns, So, like everybody else, there is a lot of juggling to do despite being one of the lucky ones.
The next few weeks I am going to try and photograph a different style of portrait every ’work’ day with the help of my two kids. I have the time, its whether they have the patience! I look forward to honing my skills as a portrait photographer, and remembering that it was taking portraits that really got me into photography in the first place!
For years I have used studio lights to photograph people. These flash heads range in power from 500 - 1500watts. They are built for photography studios which are normally 10 by 30 metres in size and that is for a small studio!
I only have 4 metres by 3 to work in so using these lights would just expose everything in the room. I could use ND filters to reduce their power but sculpting the light in a small space would still be a big problem.
So I took out my four Canon speedlite flashes and some modifiers that I have purchased over the years for them. I have mini spill kills and snoots, soft boxes and beauty dishes, gels, honeycombs, backgrounds and stands so what was I waiting for?
The first set up , I decided to play it safe. A two light set up.
One light on the background hidden behind my subject and the other on a boom with a beauty dish with a soft white fabric cover.
I taped a blue gel on the backdrop to make the subject ‘pop’ a bit more and I put a reflector on the ground in front of the subject so light would bounce from the beauty dish back up and lighten the shadows. I wanted to make sure that you can see the light reflection in the eyes.
I want to make sure that my background is really out of focus so I am using an 85mm lens at F3.5
If I can make this work in a small space then a bigger space only makes things easier.
My daughter is 4 years (and four months) old so while posing is something she is really good at, taking direction isn’t!
Using the Speedlite flashes also means that the flash recycle time is very fast which comes in handy with a four year constantly moving and making faces etc.
Four year olds are not designed to take direction!
My original idea was that my daughter would wear a sunhat so the light would obscure some facial features while revealing others.
However my problem was that I could not get Saoirse to stay still and get the balance the way I wanted it. I got close - but no cigar!
Now, if she would only put her arms back into her jumper
So I asked her to put on her big brothers hoodie. I was hoping that the hoodie would surround her face more but It didn’t. I wanted to change her hoodie again but I could sense I was running out of time with her. Puffin rock was calling out to her from the living room.
I managed to get this image by calming her down and asking math questions like “what comes after 8?” She looked more serious when answering so I got the look I was after.
I think it is a strong image and happy to add it to my portfolio.
Thats the look I was after, hair and make up will have to take a rain check!
I got the light right with my son Oisin but he wasn’t happy posing so I didn’t waste much time. I want him to come back in tomorrow and if I annoy him today then that won’t happen. I know when to cut my losses!
The soft light works well and there is an absence of butterfly shadow under the nose.
All the gear I used would be easy to transport to a location shoot which is important to me as ideally what I am looking for from this is to work with magazines and newspapers taking portraits of people not directly related to me!
From the diagram below you can see the backdrop is 55cm from the blue circular light. This light has a strip of ND going down the centre to make the blue light a little darker.
The subject is another 55 cm from the blue light and the beauty dish is at a 45 degree angle 40 cm in front of the subject. The distance from the subject to the camera is 110cm. the camera is a canon 5Ds with an 85mm lens. The exposure was F3.5@160sec at 100ISO with the power settings on the backdrop is 1/16 and 1/32 for the foreground.
Right… time to think about the next shoot!