Pictures with Santa

[jkassis]

Hey everyone! I'm completely new to this forum, but it looks like there's a great community of well-educated and wise professionals, so please allow me to scratch some brains!

I'm an intern at a large church where I specialize in the Student Ministries area for graphic design and photography/videography. I love what I do, but my studies at school only include graphic design, so I only have what I learned in high school and what I'm learning through experience for photography. My videography skills are purely based on my knowledge of photography.

Anyway, I get to work with a Canon 7D, a great step up from my Rebel XT, and I have a Tamron AF 28-75 f/2.8, as well as a Canon 55-250 IS and a Nifty Fifty, and my current assignment is to set up a photobooth for jr. high to college-aged students to have their photo taken with Santa. I'd really like to make this more exceptional than most jobs I've done, but I don't have any resources as far as lighting goes as of right now, which seems to be my biggest problem.

Any ideas of makeshift lighting rigs I could put together? Also, any fun ideas of ways to make this photobooth more unique than a regular "Photo with Santa at the mall" kinda deal?

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[tirediron]

Can you rent a couple of strobes for the occasion? Shooting Santa without adequate lighting is tough; white, black and red make for a challenging expsoure. I did something similar recently, but with pets rather than people. I used two 250w/s strobes one firing into a shoot-through umbrella, the other into a medium-size softbox. This allowed me to create a 'generic' lighting set-up that worked well for most situations.

If there's absolutely no way you can beg, borrow, rent or steal a couple of lights, is a bounced speedlight an option? (Do you have one, and are the ceilings suitable?) A reflector could help make up the second light...

As for fun/different, making Santa an attractive blonde with a small, red suit would work, but if this is a church event, that might not go over so well...

[jkassis]

Can you rent a couple of strobes for the occasion? Shooting Santa without adequate lighting is tough; white, black and red make for a challenging expsoure. I did something similar recently, but with pets rather than people. I used two 250w/s strobes one firing into a shoot-through umbrella, the other into a medium-size softbox. This allowed me to create a 'generic' lighting set-up that worked well for most situations.

If there's absolutely no way you can beg, borrow, rent or steal a couple of lights, is a bounced speedlight an option? (Do you have one, and are the ceilings suitable?) A reflector could help make up the second light...

As for fun/different, making Santa an attractive blonde with a small, red suit would work, but if this is a church event, that might not go over so well...

Considering I'm going to be needing lighting for portraits and photo booths in the future, I'd rather see if it's within our price range to purchase some lights rather than borrowing them. And I've only dipped my feet into the world of lighting, so I'm unsure what would be a good purchase. Do you have any recommendations for where to buy from, and what in particular to buy? As of now, we don't have a speedlight or and soft boxes/reflectors, etc, but I can say that a bounced speedlight wouldn't be ideal because of how high the ceiling is in the area that we're taking the photos. And I think it'd be hilarious to have a young blonde Santa, but like you said, that may not go over so well. Haha

[tirediron]

The Flashpoint series from Adorama is well reviewed, and generally considered a good-quality entry-level light. They're inexpensive, and have a wide range of modifiers available. Two lights, a trigger and aa couple of umbrellas or soft-boxes would be all you would need.

[DiskoJoe]

Hey everyone! I'm completely new to this forum, but it looks like there's a great community of well-educated and wise professionals, so please allow me to scratch some brains!

I'm an intern at a large church where I specialize in the Student Ministries area for graphic design and photography/videography. I love what I do, but my studies at school only include graphic design, so I only have what I learned in high school and what I'm learning through experience for photography. My videography skills are purely based on my knowledge of photography.

Anyway, I get to work with a Canon 7D, a great step up from my Rebel XT, and I have a Tamron AF 28-75 f/2.8, as well as a Canon 55-250 IS and a Nifty Fifty, and my current assignment is to set up a photobooth for jr. high to college-aged students to have their photo taken with Santa. I'd really like to make this more exceptional than most jobs I've done, but I don't have any resources as far as lighting goes as of right now, which seems to be my biggest problem.

Any ideas of makeshift lighting rigs I could put together? Also, any fun ideas of ways to make this photobooth more unique than a regular "Photo with Santa at the mall" kinda deal?

You could rent some lights. Probably wouldnt cost too much for a couple of softboxes and some stands (or you could use volunteers instead of stands). Or tell the church that you need them to buy you a flash for this assignment.