Ha!  That title oughtta bring in some traffic!

Tonight, Karma Shuford Photography offered a free sitting to my parents with our children.

Well, duh, they’re my parents.  Of course they get a free sitting.

And we need the practice.

Tonight’s glitch was an SB-20 that was firing but was apparently out of sync – it wasn’t lighting the background properly in the pictures.  I’ve concluded it was probably the battery in the Poverty Wizard transmitter – it appears to have never been changed since I bought the thing a couple years back.  So, until I can get a new battery and confirm that, we’ll assume that’s where the blame lies.

Another interesting “glitch” was the glare on my dad’s glasses.  I THOUGHT it was caused by the fact that we were slowing down the shutter to try to allow the SB-20 to sync and thus letting too much ambient in.  However, there’s a more complex reason, I think.  We’re using a single key light, usually to camera left, in a semi-Rembrandt lighting.  Thus, the person on camera left, who is facing slightly toward camera right, has perfectly clear glasses (see my Mom in the picture below).  However, my Dad, who is on camera right and facing left, has a different problem and thus the reflection shows up.  Lesson:  when multiple people in the shot have glasses, get them all facing so that the key light is not reflecting in their glasses.  Glad this wasn’t a paying client!

I don’t like the poses.  We need to work on some “stock” poses for couples, especially older couples.  But we worked with them a little bit.

A couple pics….

The setup

Mom and Dad

This warrants a really long post, but I may be interrupted by the demands of raising children, so I’ll start out with some brief facts….

• 9 foot roll of white Savage paper at Ball Photo – $90
• One white umbrella – came with a set of Smith Victor lights that we have but NEVER use.
• Tall tripod to mount the umbrella and flash – free gift from a friend at work.
• 2 Nikon SB-20 speedlites – about $90.  Almost the greatest flashes known to man.  Working SB-24s are a little better.
• Tripods for SB-20s – unknown cost
• PVC stand  for paper – cost uncertain, probably about $40, plus a couple hours of time.  (Used the “stick in a bucket” method…)
• Fotodiox optical slave – $15 at www.mpex.com
• Umbrella bracket – $15 at www.mpex.com
• Ebay triggers for SB-20s – maybe $40??
• Nikon SB-24 – $50, but the doggone thing went haywire and didn’t work for the shoot
• Bowers SFD35C flash in full power only mode, shooting into and through the umbrella.  $80 or so.
• Lots of AA batteries.
• One 4×8 sheet of white tile board from Lowe’s.
• Spring clamps
• Cardboard gobos
• Willing subjects

Karma manned (womanned???) the camera; my job here was lighting and setup.  We set up the studio in our living room – I should have taken some setup shots, but there was one overwhelming lesson to be learned.  The lighting grip should ALWAYS verify the time of the shoot.  I somehow got it in my head that we were shooting at 7 pm, so I left work at 5:30 and breezed home and began the setup.  Only then did I learn that the shoot was at 6 pm.  Oops.  So, the “clients”, who are good personal friends of ours, had to wait a few minutes.  Luckily, we were still shooting by 6:15 or so, and all went really well with that. 

The friends are a local couple who have five children – four girls and a 1 year old boy.  Or is he two?  I can’t remember.  He’s walking, but he’s LITTLE.  The girls are extremely energetic – the oldest is ten or so?? – but they were a MARVELOUS group to shoot.  Maybe we can get permission to post a couple shots.  We couldn’t have possibly had a better group to guinea pig our studio.  Thanks so much to the Sisks.

The key problem we have had with this setup is spill from the background “hazing” over the subjects.  We still got a few shots that show some of it, but the use of the umbrellaed key light definitely solved the majority of it.

Another key lesson is to always shoot some shots with the kids on the floor looking up, so that the catch lights get in both eyes and are clear and bright.  I consider good catch lights to be a definite indicator of professional photography, so we will continue to work on this.

We really liked the results.  Using the tile board as a “floor” is an AMAZING idea – thank you SO much, Zack Arias!!!  We’ve still got “techniques” to perfect, but this was a really good start.

Camera was a Canon 30D.  All shots in RAW, processed with Canon DPP and PaintShop Pro.  That, too, is Karma’s job.  We use SmugMug for print sales, and I couldn’t possibly recommend them any higher.  They are fantastic.