baby/children photography

i will be starting to do some portrait shoots for newborns, babies and children. someone had

mentioned to me that its best using natural daylight for such shoots... through window in room

etc plus a reflector. any thoughts on this? i have a shoot coming up for a 2yr old.. not sure

whether to use studio lights... shooting him on the bed of his parents - or to allow the window light

to come thru... any thoughts and helpw ould be great

Children usually move fast! Only use natural light if, for some reason, you have a slow child or lots of light for fast shutter speeds. I would definitely carry lights as a backup.

You will have to drug a two year old to use natural window light.

 

Use A key and fill at 1:1 ratio, soft boxes or umbrellas.

Concur: close-out window light so that you have full control of the lighting. Use (2x?) flash

to kill (OUCH! Wrong choice of words here...) subject movement. One or two reflectors to

soften/open up shadows.

 

Now that is the subject lighting.

 

Thought about what you (they) want for backgrounds and the lighting thereof? And what is

technically possible?

 

Remember: you can use slower-than-X-sync shutter speeds if you want to get ambient

artificial light points (i.o.w. the average (bedside?) lamp in the interior that's in the frame)

to come through a little more pleasing. Experiment.

 

Bracket!

 

If you bracket adequately you'll have good material to later apply some measure of

dynamic range optimization to (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDRI and http://

www.hdrsoft.com/). Which could perhaps make your photos really shine!

Oh yeah, and set it up, light it out, and do your testhots with a sack of potatoes as a

placeholder for the baby (or ANYthing of course). And leave the baby in it's cot until 10

minutes before curtain time (give the baby some time to become fully awake).

 

I'd be surprised if you'll get more than 30 minutes of actual 'lens time' with the baby

before it fades or gets otherwise unphotographeable.

You want to avoid cry-faces at ALL cost!

 

Anyway, with the setting up and testing you have everything sorted out - and tested! -

when the baby comes into the frame. That really gets the number of unpleasant technical

surprises way down. So you'll have some more piece of mind and can pay full attention to

the baby and the timing of your exposures.

 

Have fun!

Hala,

 

If I read your post correctly this will be shot on the parents bed near a window...Right? That is a beautiful scenerio for natural window light and a reflector.If they could read to him or engage him an an activity on the bed the natural light would be fine.If they decide to do some bed jumping or pillow fighting than you your flash and bounce it. Use your fastest lens and have fun!<P>Elaine Marie<P>

 

http://www.myspace.com/elainemariephotography

thank you all for all your tips and suggestions. in the situation where i want to light up the

bedside lamps... so that they come thru in the image... what should the lighting ratio be, in

order for that to come through - rather than my flash lights killing the bedside lamps? how

do i set that up.. to mainting the lights on in the background..?

Have you considered apprenticing with one of the masters? The great Olan Mills will train you for $9.99.

"i want to light up the bedside lamps... so that they come thru in the image"

 

Hala, I would shoot in manual. Meter the scene without the lights by doing the following. Begin with your desired aperture (think about what depth of field you need/want). Then choose appropriate shutter speed. I would start with your max synch speed. I think you would want the camera's meter to read one or two stops underexposed. Basically, start with a dark (if not black) image and decrease your shutter speed until that lamp starts to show through. I am thinking you would want the lamp to look properly exposed, but not bright enough to contribute to the exposure of the child (white balance issues). Once the lamp looks good, you can add your light(s) and adjust accordingly. The bedside lamp may look orange (or another warm color) compared to the part of the image lit by your flash. You may like this effect or you could use a warming gel (and adjust your white balance) to balance things out.

If you have natural light, use it. Nothing wrong with that at all, assuming you have reasonably fast glass.

 

I suggest having a good feel for exposures so you do not bracket. With kids, every shot is different. If you bracket one shot on each side, already you are throwing away 67% of your shots. For peeling paint and ferns, that's fine. They're not going anywhere. For kids, that's simply not realistic.

 

If you're well versed with artificial lighting, there's nothing wrong with going that route, either. Better yet, do both. When it comes to light, my best sources run on batteries because I can neither always depend on Mother Nature nor on having electricity.

 

My first advice would be to get down to the level of the child. In general, don't stand and aim downward.

 

 

Eric

If you don't have all the softbox and umbrella crap, I would reccomend using natural light if there is ALOT of it, using a speedlight with a diffuser/(i use an index card) so it will give you almost the same kind of light a sofbox would give you.

Oh-yeah if you're going to use a flash bounce it off the celing or a reflector, there's nothing more ugly than too much flash in a portrait.