The photo setup at a house, because you asked!

Been involved in a couple of conversations lately where lots of interest has been expressed in how I setup for a photo shoot in a home. It's always nice to have an interested person to talk to, very gratifying and I swear my hat size only expanded a little while my virtues were expounded upon. So here we go - a shoot at Rebecka's parents'-in-law, to celebrate the birth of her daughter less than a week ago and to photograph the extended family as they are today.

The first shot is natural light - I needed to balance the light coming in the window with the light that I'd add from flashes. This late in the fall, there are still some leaves on the trees - and the Christmas cactus is blooming! What a weird fall we've been having.

I decided to shoot at f/5.6, and with the Canon 5D's top sync speed at 1/125th, I only needed to figure out which ISO would match the settings. Turned out to be 320, which is a lovely place to be for low noise in the image.


With those settings, I set up a high light in the upper right of the image with a 30-degree grid. That light gives a nice depth and separation to people in the photo, and kind of acts like an imitation sun, to complement the sunlight coming in through the window behind. The main light was a 3 foot round softbox behind me to my right. I put a fill card on the right (white foamcore) to fill in some of the shadow values. That's the next shot.


Then I moved the durn softbox around until it wasn't reflecting in the window anymore. Jeez.


And then I shot the family! All of 'em! Bang! (Oy, I kill myself...)


After we were done, we all looked at the photos together and made some selections. This takes care of 2 things - even though Rebecka bought a CD of the whole shoot, she and her family narrowed down the choices so they don't have to find the time later to pick favorites. And it gives me immediate feedback. Did I do a great job? Awesome! I feel wonderful! Did we miss a shot? Then let's go get it before all the players disappear.

While they were making final choices on the computer, David headed back into the living room with the baby, and I followed to take a few quick natural-light photos of her sleeping adorableness. And the family's first baby, Mahiri the dog, re-asserted her place.


Thanks for the shoot, Rebecka!
Love,
Meghan