Babies Babies and More Babies!

Up Close and Personal!

I don’t do a lot of baby portraits, but when I do, I must say that I am very lucky because the little ones seem to be just drawn to me and the camera.  This series of images is from a recent session with three different babies.  I was blessed to shoot in one of my favorite locations, a cottage that by itself, is a nice little portrait studio.  It features white walls, ceilings, and gorgeous light at almost anytime of day.  No need to setup lights.  I simply just bounce the flash and drag the shutter to get a nice soft, flat, light.  The ambient build up quite nicely and works as a great rims light if positioned correctly.  This little girl just loved the camera.  I was down at floor level, and just let her crawl towards me.  I was amazed at how close she got!  I had a 24-70 lens on a 40d body.  I know it is a goofy shot, but the awkward head size and expression sold me.  Normally, I shoot RAW.  In this situation, the lighting was so consistant and simple, I decided to shoot JPEG’s to save space on my cards.  I personally, love my images to jump with color right from the camera.  My simple way of doing this is by using the built in profiles that the camera has called “Picture Styles”.  I always leave my camera set on “landscape” as it gives me a nice combination of sharpness, and saturation, right out of camera.  I always try and go for warm, colorful skin tones, but always try to keep them somewhat in line.  I also, usually set my kelvin in camera to warm up the flash a little.  The next two images were shot using a 70-200 IS lens.  I was able to back up a little and throw the background out of focus.  To sum up all of this, when you are blessed with decent light, keep it simple and use your surroundings.  They can be walls, ceilings, or floors.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

High Speed Sync and Graduation!

So my wonderful girlfriend Courtney graduated from College a couple of weeks ago.  It was a long hard journey for her, and having a photographer boyfriend, she knew that I would be there with my camera being all “creepy” (she calls it)  and such.  After arriving at the arena super early to get as close as I could to the stage, I was in a position to get a clear shot of her as she received her dimploma and shook hands with the college chancellor.  I had my camera mounted on a tripod, along with a 580EX with an external battery pack.  After getting a feel for the ambient light (very crappy sports type lighting), I threw the camera in aperture priority mode and pretty much let the flash do all the work.  I was using a 70-200mm lens zoomed all the way out.  The flash carried itself nicely all the way out to 200mm.  The only other thing I did was dial in some -EV for the background, but besides that I got my one shot that I had hoped for.

Canon EOS40D with EF70-200 f2.8LIS Exposure: 1/200 F4.5 ISO 800

After the ceremony was finished it was time to snap a couple of quick photos with family outside.  The sun was high in the sky, and there were people everywhere.  There was no where to really retreat where there was a nice looking background.  My quick solution was to throw the camera into f2.8, crop in tight, and make use of that special high speed sync feature on the 580ex.  I don’t regularly use this feature, but in this instance the camera was giving me a 1/800 shutter speed.  The high speed sync worked excellent, acting simply as a fill flash.  Not my idea of a perfect photo by any means, but certainly better than an average snapshot, especially in a quick and crowded situation.

–Craig