Family Favors

With all the family in town over the last week, I was asked by my wife to take some pictures.  Her closest friend, who would be considered her sister, and her husband were in town for the weekend.  They have not had any pictures since they we married a few years back, and this was a perfect opportunity.  Naturally, the two girls needed to get in one together.  Used an overhead halogen light to bring up the backdrop.  Again, I would really like to have more control over this light by using a third flash.  Sometime this year…

Merry Christmas to All

Its come to that time again to send family and friends Christmas cards.  One thing I love about them recently is that photo cards have become the best way to send your holiday cheer.  In my house, the same is true.  For just a few cents per print, you can get great looking prints with matching graphics and text to match your style.  I wanted to give the new muslin a run, and the results were great.  The shots were set up with one Canon 580 EXII set straight on, and one set camera right, both shot into reflective umbrellas.  I used a reflector disc to bounce back the light onto the left side of their cheeks.  With all muslin, it gets wrinkled.  Using a small aperture brings the focus to those wrinkles, but widening the aperture to F/4.0 kept the background nice and buttery.

Thanks to all that have allowed me to photograph your families this year.  It has really helped me learn!  Merry Christmas to all…

Nick

Winter Arrives

With the winter months arriving, and the temperatures dropping there is little opportunity to get out and take pictures.  Some of the winter scenes arounds southeastern Wisconsin can be beautiful when the first snowfall clings to the trees, but once the salt hits the roads…the slush, and flith of the season is evident.  Being stuck indoors in fine, it gives me a chance to work on some studio work with the strobes.  Here is a few recent shots that I have taken.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…

Halloween came and went, and it seems that our neighborhood has decided that this holiday is equally as important as Christmas.  I have never seen so many home decorations.  It was quite impressive. Considering the temperature outside, I would have thought a few kids might stay at home, but again, candy reigns supreme.  I decided to stand in the driveway besides a fire and hand out candy to our neighborhood kids running the streets.  My little girls didn’t make it very long, but I was able to get our youngest in front of the camera for a few shots.  Its easy to see the fairest one of all…

Weiß, Blanco, and белый

I have been doing some reading recently and trying to determine the best possible way to shoot against a white backdrop.  There is something about a subject placed against a sheer white background.  The crispness really appeals to me.  Now, there are plenty of ways to Photoshop the background completely white, but that takes plenty of time.  I wanted to find a way to use a low f/ stop slower shutter speed and my speedlites to blow out the background, yet keep enough light for the facial expressions.

I first setup the white linen backdrop, and covered the front half on the floor with a fake fur that I picked up on the cheap from Wal-Mart last week.  The added texture would help with the softness of the look I was going for.  I placed my usual speedlite behind myself, fired down towards using a white shoot through umbrella.  I placed my second speedlite behind the backdrop pointed back towards me shooting through yet another umbrella.  I knew that the linen would help diffuse the light, but wanted additional softness so using the umbrella really help spread the light across the entire backdrop.  I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 L dropped to f/2.8 and set the shutter to 1/100 – 1/125 which helped saturate the image and blow out the backdrop.

Up until this point I had been afraid to use their type of technique because the background just appeared gray and unlit, but I will be using this one again in the future.  The help of a monolight will assist with setting up the shot.

Someday My Prince Will Come

My daughter was given a princess costume as a gift for some occasion from a good friend.  We hadn’t used it yet since she was a little young to take care of it.  My wife recently took it out of the closet, and there were a few times this last week where she wandered around the house in this adorable little dress up kit consisting of jewelry, shoes, and a tutu.  I knew that I had to take a few pictures of her.  I also haven’t had a chance to use the new chair that I had painted recently, so I felt this was a great opportunity to use it.  I found this chair in the junk heap at my school, and it must be 50 plus years old.  Its one of those that you can’t buy anymore, a kindergarten chair hand crafted from the 1950′s.  My issue was keeping her in it…kids are so much easier to take pictures of when they can’t walk or crawl.  In the end, many of the usable shots were taken from a bar stool.  This prevented her from running off.  I look forward to more pictures of her dressing up…I’m sure she will have makeup on, strutting high heels, and begging for a skirt before I realize it.

I Love My Teddy

Like most parents with two girls, I’m sure there is an over abundance of teddy bears in the house.  I wanted to give a run at shooting the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 L lens from a distance, and more importantly see if the flashes would fire using the Canon ST-E2.  It works really well when using a shorter lens, but I was going to be backing up a bit, and bringing it in tight.  Having the extra bit of zoom allowed me to get really close, but not getting in the way of the umbrella flash stands.  I’m not too happy with the backdrop…even after white balance tweaks its just not looking as white as I want.  Im going to use my third speedlite, a Canon 430EXII to light the backdrop exclusively and see if that helps.  I love that smile…