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About a month ago, my sister-in-law asked if I can take some family portraits for her family. She wanted something different and as always, I’m more than happy to do anything different. What is different? I asked the same question and was given free rein to do what I thought would be different. Knowing that my sister-in-law is a traditionalist and enjoy designs that best be described as “Victorian”, I knew I couldn’t go too far for the chart.
With “traditionalist” in mind, I was fully expecting the family to show up with matching turtlenecks. But my game plan was quickly thrown out the door the moment they walked through with matching jeans, blue and white shirt combos. My vision went from warm-snuggie-around-the-firepit to “Modern Family”.
From a technical standpoint, it was a pretty straightforward. I used a Westcott 43″ white collapsible umbrella as shoot-thru to get broad/even coverage, I kept the shutter fairly open to bring in a bit more ambient. Use natural light as rim whenever I can. At one point I had to ball-bungie a 2nd SB-600 on to the light stand to get a faster recycle time but nothing out of the ordinary. Time management on the other hand was a whole different ball of wax however. Let just say I, being a goofball, generally cause kids to goof off even when I don’t want them to, and that I had to sort through A LOT of images where at least one niece had crossed-eyed, balloon-cheeks, general grumpiness, or being grumpy while crossed-eyed with cheeks inflated.
All it all though, good times!
