... Family ...

I really like this photo. It really epitomizes the family event (grandma's birthday?). The exposure is spot on. The layout may have been better if you'd taken half a step to your right so the folks on the left weren't so hidden.

I'd love to know how you managed this shot. It appears that the candles provide the only significant lighting in the room, yet there's no motion blur in your subjects and (at this resolution) no significant high-ISO grain noise. You shot with a 50/1.4, but given the level of focus on the rear-most man, it appears that you were nowhere near f/1.4 for this shot. Did you severely under expose at the time and then pull it back up in postprocessing?

Such a lovely moment... so wonderfully captured! Congrats Michael!

Happy Shooting!:-)

Hugo

Thank you, all :) This capture was taken in a resturant with the family celebrating the 80th birthday of the lovely lady at viewer's right.

This was a near spontaneous as possible - the only 'posing' input by me was to ask them to form a rough semi-circle around the cake. I then sat back and let the emotion of the event take it's natural course, tripping the shutter when the 'life' sparked between them all. What I do love about it is the natural of expression, the overwhelmingly positive mood and the interaction of facial and body expressions between all members.

For those that are interested, I exposed for the candles and the surrounds of the plate. Light was predominantly from the candles. The resturant had some really dim tungsten lighting overhead (terrible for 'mood'). With the 580EX flash, I bounced a little light off the ceiling to light the rest of the scene. In post, I burned the background and dodged the faces to bring them out. Grain is very apparent in the full version - I actually like it that way. ISO 1600 from memory with Adobe Lightroom's noise reduction applied.

Thank you again... :)