Today

Today is in an important day. Today is a day when you get to help make a decision.

If you didn't vote early, please take the time to vote now.

[Poll #1875880]

(And if you enjoy this process, there may be other things about which you can record your opinion.)

Toddler in the woods

Sunday night, I took photos of davidschroth, mizzlaurajean and their young one who doesn't seem to have an Internet name yet. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my camera had issues. I also had issues with the light, as it was cloudy instead of partly-cloudy as the forecast suggested. I also knew, going in, that a young child with limited English in a new, exciting and cold environment would be difficult to pose. So, I brought my flashes and set up a fairly standard cross-lighting pattern. You can sorta see the plan here:



I had two flashes on stands aiming at a central point. This means that if I shoot in RAW mode, I get a decent spread so I had a magic circle of about three meters in which the light would be pretty good and an extended ring of about three meters around that that I could push the images a bit to get something usable. The drawback to this plan is that the shadows can be harsher, which can ruin some shots and, since the sun was setting, anything outside of the magic ring would look a lot cooler (bluer) then the people. The latter problem actually worked to my benefit as it made the shots more dramatic, so they don't look like the standard family photo shots.

Were I to do it again, I would have used my new umbrella and new camera and potentially tried to gel the flashes to make the colour temperature difference less stark... but I think it worked well. You can check out the set here.

This is my favorite:


( Highlights )