Well, its been a good few months since I first posted here – I was even beginning to forget I had a website! So its really time that I got back on the horse and posted again. What I hope to do in these posts is to show a few recent shots and to talk a little about how they came about and my thoughts about them. I’d welcome any comments you may have.
This wild picture of my daughter came from an extended session designed mostly to document her loss of baby teeth. She isn’t always this fierce – maybe it was the photographer?
For any camera nerds who may be reading, the set-up was as follows (non-camera nerds please skip the following paragraph!): three speedlights; black muslin background from a fabric store, swung over a cross bar mounted on a couple of lightstands; two Canon speedlights mounted light stands (a 580 EX II and a 430 EX) , reflected into white umbrellas. The 580 EX II was attached to an extended hotshoe cord that had been modified using a similar technique to this and acted as controller for the other flashes. The umbrellas were positioned somewhat equidistantly from the subject to my left and right, slightly higher so that the light was pointing down. 1/8 cts gels were gaffer taped to the flashes for warmth. A third flash was placed behind my daughter to act as a hair light. The exposure was around F8 at 1/250.
This was a fun and very active shoot, with lots of movement from my daughter. So much so, that it wasn’t always easy to capture everything as I wanted. For instance, in the image below, my daughter is trying to reach out and grab my camera. My deal with her to let me take pictures of her was that she got to take pictures of me too. We both had a good time doing this, however, you’ll see that the hair light isn’t really pointing at her hair, nor is she really in focus. This is not surprising as she was moving toward me as I was taking the shot. Still, I love it because she looks so happy. Her hair is pretty wild because she had been on her scooter for the last couple of hours, racing up and down the driveway.
What I really love to capture is a subject being themselves. Our culture conditions us to smile in front of camera – however this is not what we look like, its what we think we ought to look like, or what we think the other people wants to see. The conditioning starts very young. I cringe when I hear parents tell their kid to smile for the camera, particularly when they get their kid to stop what they are doing, such as playing, working on something or whatever. They are, in other words, stopping them being who they are so they can be, for a weird few moments, the smiling kid for the camera. But its usually not really a smile, its a grotesque rictus of a thing – you don’t get a smiling kid, you get the kid doing what he or she thinks they are supposed to do, and so it usually looks forced and unnatural. Its a terrible frame of mind to get kids into. My daughter even picked up this habit from somewhere – she certainly never got it from me! When taking pictures of children, my usual tactic to get around this is to spend a few minutes chatting away with the kid, goofing around, and then start taking pictures of them as we are chatting. I usually get lots of great shots of kids at this point, being themselves and having fun. At a certain point, the kid usually gets relaxed enough to do more formal portraits – and if all goes well, that sense of naturalness and relaxation will show. The following picture is illustrative, although obviously wasn’t taken at the same time as the other shots.
When I’m working with a subject, be it a kid, or a family for a group portrait, or even for corporate headshots, I try as much as I can to get the person to relax and be themselves. It isn’t always possible, but when I’m successful, you can see the tension go, and the person appear. If I can capture that moment, I feel like I’m doing something right as a photographer.
