Portrait Experimentation

Sunday afternoon, I don't watch sports really, so what to do...?

Take over the kitchen of course! I spent this afternoon shooting portrait shots in the kitchen. We have this south facing window with wooden blinds on is (there is an east facing window as well, but it doesn't get the same light). The winter sun is pretty controllable right now- in summer we just pull the blinds closed late in the day (way too hot!)

I set up the camera on a tripod, put a chair right where I could dial up the 

light with the blinds, put a flash on a small stand and hung a big reflector from the light over the dining room table (my spouse is very tolerant). I shot a few of my wife, but she was pretty bored, so I did mostly self portraits. It was totally experimental- tweak this, shoot, chimp. Tweak that, shoot, chimp. Repeat. 

This is one of the better ones. The window is camera right. The reflector (42" 5-in-1 Multidisc by Photoflex) is camera left about three feet from my head with the gold side showing. It is reflecting both some of the window light and a flash at my chest height on camera right. The flash with a diffuser is pointed at the reflector and gobboed with a calendar on a justin clamp so that the light only hits the reflector and not me (working in a tight space, flash placement was challenging). There is just a hint of light coming straight at me from the on-camera flash (about 1/128, the off-camera flash is at about 1/32- exposure is f/3.3 at 1/125, using a Nikon prime  50mm 1.4). Overall, not terrible. I like how warm the gold reflector and the wooden blinds make the whole thing. It took some messing with the white balance to match that orange and not have me look like I was glowing. Once I had gotten a shot I liked out of the set-up it was time to mess around.

My daughter likes to model, but she isn't big on patience. Its shoot, chimp, compose, repeat. The white balance felt off on this one, but when I tried to correct I got this. This expression is the 'dad, you take too long to do the fun stuff" face. So what is a dad to do? Let the kid run the camera of course. She already knows the arrow in the rectangle is the chimping button. And she loves being in charge and giving me orders. So I let her. 

This was one of her favorites. Why is it that dad looking like an idiot is so pleasing to children? It probably has something to do with the overdeveloped sense of seriousness most of us grownups have. She did let me shoot a few more though. Shooting with her is positively aerobic. Take picture, jump up, chimp, arrange, get set, shoot again. 

I did get one more shot that was sort of interesting. I opened up the blinds just enough to get the pattern going on me. Something a bit different. I like the bands of light. I am also digging the pensive look on the model's face. Maybe Calvin Klein will call? Of course, I'd be just as happy with Smartwool- they are much more my speed, as you can see.

In the back of my head was Joe McNally's latest post on the D3x. I do not have a D3x (lust lust), but his shots of this wrestler were really cool. My shots- not so cool. But fun to jack around with light.