B&W Portrait

The details for this image are basically the same as for the two sisters previously posted, except for the clothing and background. Because this pose happened quickly I was not fully prepared for the depth of field I needed to get the back girl precisely in focus. I had upped my aperture to f8.5, but ideally I would have liked it to be about f11 or even f16, since the closer you are to a scene that requires different planes to be in focus, the more depth of field you need compared to being at a distance. If I had been at a distance, 3/4 pose for example, I would have been fine with an aperture of f8.5, but as it was the back girl was just a tiny touch soft, which I successfully improved in PS — but I prefer not to “save” focus via that method. Best to get the adequate DOF in the camera for sure.

I focused on a point slightly behind the boy’s eyes, so that DOF would include him, and also carry back toward the girls, since DOF extends more going away from the photographer than it does coming at the photographer.

Tech: Same as previously posted image of the two sisters. Burned around the edges to tone down the brightness of the light gray backdrop that was used.

–Eddie.

These two sisters were wonderful to work with. The portrait was made during a larger more involved family session, where I photographed many different family combos, brothers with sisters, dad with daughters, mom and dad, just the kids, etc. So I worked fast, and took liberties in suggesting to my subjects what I had in mind for posing and expressions. For this image, I wanted to keep the faces smooth, so I didn’t want them to smile too much. Yet, neither did I want them to come off overly serious or pensive, because the sisters seemed to be very content with themselves otherwise. So during the shooting of a handful of frames, I would tell them I was looking for just a hint of a smile, just a tiny one. Fortunately, everyone has his/her own version of just a hint of a smile, and so the results are never the same between subjects. Since there’s a very fine line between a relaxed, content expression, and one that is somber or sad, a photographer usually has to guide the subject a bit. I remember one large format portrait photographer once say that he would not press the shutter release until that very moment where he would suddenly see his subjects as “just being there”. To me, he was referring to that elusive moment when the subjects cease to put up a facade and open up to the camera. I really don’t know if I accomplished that here, but it is something I try for in studio settings where there’s more of a chance to study subjects’ expressions in the viewfinder.

–Eddie.

Tech: Handheld Fuji S2, 50mm f1.4 lens set to f8, sync speed of 1/125th, B/W Fine JPG, ISO 100, ORG tone, Standard sharp. Background was actually a dark gray muslin, but because of light fall-off (the background was about 7 feet behind the girls), it was rendered quite dark, which I liked because it complemented the dark clothing we chose.

As you can see, this image involves a pretty straight forward arrangement, nothing out of the ordinary. The challenge here was to get three acceptable expressions happening at once, and have them complement each other. Although the kids were giving me plenty of smiles (they were great in wanting to help out, they really were!), I was in my heart, as usual, wanting to capture their faces in some state of repose, or close to it. I shot several frames with this subject placement, but in only one was I even a little close in getting what I envisioned. The happy thing here is, although I wanted 3 faces in repose, the younger boy choosing not to abide by my dream turned out in the end to lend an appealing (at least to me) twist on my previsualization. I can’t remember why he arranged his mouth that way, but I like how it contrasts with the other two expressions.
–Eddie.

Tech:Handheld Fuji S2, Nikon 50mm f1.4 lens, 1/180th sec., ISO 160, Fine JPG, B/W mode, ORG tone, Standard Sharp. File work: levels and contrast adjustment, and bringing back the highlights by partially erasing the contrast layer. Otherwise, the “color” of the file was not changed from the original. As usual, I located the sun behind the kids, and made sure there was open sky somewhere in front of them… in this case to the right mostly.

For this shot of just the boys, the same set up was used as with the previous image. Although I was happy with the overall lighting, I had to dodge the oldest boy’s face a little because some light was being blocked by the other two boys. That kind of thing will happen in situations where you are letting the subject’s roam around the studio setting. For this one, I got up from my shooting position, ran over to the little group and squished them all together. Fortunately, they managed to retain that positioning for a second or two, long enough to get a couple of frames off.

Tech: Same as the previous image, except that the boys here are a little further away from the background, as evidenced by the slight softening back there.

–Eddie.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem likely that a bunch of energetic kids will stay in one place for some portraits outdoors. So when I get that feeling, I try to gather them indoors against a studio backdrop. For some reason, it tends to work, whereas outdoors it may have been hit or miss.
For this session of 4 cousins, I didn’t want to photograph them against my usual white or dark gray muslin, so I de-wadded a background that I recently got from Silverlake Photo, called Polar. The light, consisting of an extra large Photoflex softbox mounted on a Photoflex LS2218 light stand on the camera’s right, was placed about 5 ft away from the kids. A JTL 66 inch white oval reflector was placed just to the left of the group, in order to fill in some of the shadows that would otherwise form on the side opposite the light.

In self critique, I would have liked the background to be blurred a bit so that the detail wouldn’t distract me. However, in this case, I had no more room behind me to back up so that the kids could be further away from the background. There are usually compromises to be made on location, that’s for sure.

Tech: Handheld Fuji S2, 50mm f1.4 lens set to f8 (to get adequate depth of field because I wasn’t sure where or in what arrangement the kids would be standing or sitting), sync speed of 1/125th, B/W Fine JPG, ISO 100, ORG tone, Standard sharp, Back-button focusing (focus point was placed on the child nearest the camera), Infrared trigger to fire the strobe. No special treatment done to the file.

–Eddie.