Christmas, a time for children

Anyone else notice that it's Christmas time again. I'm no scrooge and bah humbug merchant, but as December rolls round the concern for what can I get people for Christmas and how much will it all cost comes to mind. It seems that for some the option of a portrait of the kids is also an idea, usually the request comes on the back of a set of school pictures from November where the results didn't meet the expectations. One thing I've noticed in recent months is a trend - almost a complete conversion - to a more lifestyle type of photos in schools. Gone are the typical sit here, look this way, smile... next type of shots. In are white backgrounds, lying on the floor, socks off commercial portraiture. Of course when there's more than one sibbling then it gets more difficult.

So the request came, can you shoot the three kids as the school photo didn't make the grade. Seizing the opportunity to work for free and practise some of the strobist techniques from that seminar a few weeks ago, life couldn't be better. On balance knocking over a speedlite that is stood on the floor already is a safer option than the big octobanks I've used in previous times. For this set up the key is getting three expressions looking good on three children whilst all of them are looking to the camera; parents like to see their kids faces. So that often means simple light that covers a multitude of places and positions.

Here a single shoot through umbrella was used high and camera left about 45 degrees. A white nylon 'shower curtain material' background was set up behind the children and then a Speedlite set on the floor pointing at the white wall behind the shower curtain. Taking the test shot told me that there was no chance of using the ambient to get the background white and have a shutter speed fast enough to freeze kids! So forgoing the ambient and relying on two battery powered flashes we started. Camera on manual, flashes in E-TTL, 580EX on the camera. Flash in brolly set as channel A, 420 behind the curtain as C. ETTL told to control A:B C, making C +2EV using the settings.

Strobism and auto flash - don't tell David Hobby.

I knew that indoors the flash should work, there's enough white walls to bounce the flash signals off and sure enough it all worked fine. I could try and shoot plenty of pics to get the expressions I wanted the parents wanted. In the end I didn't do too bad and only at the last minute before delivering the prints did I decide to photoshop the head of the little girl from one picture on to a group of three shot where the two boys were better.

the results


including one of my faves


Strangely today I've been to my sons nursery nativity and shot video - should be enough video now to last me until the next Christmas play. Just when you think editing is slow with EOS-1Ds Mark III RAW images, along comes video. There's a reason Apple demonstrates on massive MAC Pro computers with multiple processors, buckets of RAM and stripey raided hard disks; that reason is video editing.

- p4pictures -