And here is the before and after shot:

Richard was determined to hide from the camera and did a pretty good job:

Look left…

No, the other left…!

Thanks to Lisa and Richard for a fun afternoon! If you would like a fun location portrait session, get in touch!

Instead of the usual stuffy, posed,  ‘stand-still, say-cheese’ portraits, Laureyn wanted a portrait of her kids having fun. Just the kind of portraits we like to take! We had a really great time trying to keep up with this energetic bunch, and we think we managed to capture their lively personalities.

Here are a few of our favourites from the shoot:

All of these shots, except the last one, were taken with one strobe to the left of camera at various heights. I set up a black muslin behind and over our bed to give Lynsey a comfortable place to pose. Here are the results of my first attempt at maternity photography:

Megan and her mum at the church:

Megan’s Christening:

Poor Ben was feeling a bit ill, but I still managed to get a few lovely shots of him and his mum:

Nikki and Megan outside the house:

Three generations:

After three throw your leaves!

Megan with Granny:

"Now Thomas, can you put your arm round your sister?"

"Aww now that’s very cute!"

I planned to make three pictures:

• A simple head shot so that potential customers can get an idea of who they are dealing with
• A product shot or two of the items the customer will receive
• An overview image that shows the consultation ‘in action’ so the customer knows what to expect on the day

For this shoot write-up I’m going to talk about the last of these images; the ‘consultation in action’ shot. The final image is shown below; please continue to read the article below for an explanation of my set-up.

A few days before the shoot I sketched out a plan for the shot in a note book so that I was properly prepared. The consultation involves the draping of material over the customer whilst they sit in front of a mirror – I planned to capture this process via the reflection in the mirror.

I recently purchased a new Manfrotto short ‘Backlite’ stand (MN 012B) specifically with this shoot in mind – I planned to hide it behind the table to evenly backlight the white background.

My main source of light was from a softbox raised as high as the ceiling allowed (around 8 feet) pointing down and towards the subjects (and camera). This meant that the back and shoulders of the standing subject would be in shadow and therefore not a distraction. To provide even illumination of both subjects’ faces I placed a reflector just out of the frame to the left of the subjects to bounce some of the light back.

Something I had failed to consider when planning the shot prior to the shoot was that the mirror would (of course) reflect the opposite wall (complete with distracting wall covering, picture rail, etc.) I only own one background support system so a kind helper (thanks Kenny!) held my black muslin whilst standing on a step ladder. This resulted in a clean, distraction-free reflection.

I angled the mirror slightly towards the camera, positioned myself just out of view of the reflection and took the shots. An overview of the set-up is shown in the diagram below:

I was quite pleased with the resulting shots and actually chose to combine two images to create the final picture; one that framed the subjects’ backs just as I intended, with one that reflected better expressions on the subjects’ faces!

Lewis and our dog Jodie get on well…

I used a shoot-through umbrella to give an even coverage on the background. The rest of the set up was kept fairly simple; a softbox camera-left, quite low to the ground as many of the shots had the subject(s) seated and a sunfire reflector camera-right to open up the shadows. Below is a diagram showing the set up:

Here are the rest of the photos taken with the Canon 350D and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L @ f/13, 1/200, ISO 100: