Family Photo

Aggressor · Sep 22, 2008

Taken in early dusk. I'm not entirely happy with this shoot so C&C would be appreciated.

philippians1v21 · Sep 22, 2008

Well to start the reflection in dad's glasses has to go. If its a family portrait I would try to showcase the family not just the parents. Other than that though I'm not up on the technical side of things yet so, I can't really comment on those.

JaimeGibb · Sep 23, 2008

Shots at dusk are hard to master. And I can't help you much

I'm still trying to master it myself.

Try exposing for the sky, then using your flash to light up your subjects. And def. agreed about the glasses.

These are technical things though, I'm sure the family loves them

Aggressor · Sep 23, 2008

Thanks for the advice. Good call on the flare on the glasses. Don't know why I missed that.

As for the lighting, I think my problem could be solved with two flashes. I had a flash on camera left aiming between both groups and I think the compromise ended up leaving me with poor lighting on both groups (which were separated by about 8 ft).

Below is a similar setup with them shoulder to shoulder. The lighting seems more even here, I think.

I just uploaded this set to my site for presentation. Hope the family likes them!

Parkerman · Sep 23, 2008

Well.. both pictures are pretty badly under exposed.

Aggressor · Sep 23, 2008

Yep... I agree. That was the best I could recover them before the noise got bad.

Big Mike · Sep 23, 2008

I agree, the severe underexposure is a big problem. If that is already edited to brighten them up, the it must have been really bad to start with.

Lighting a group can be tricky. You need to remember that light falls of at an inverse square to the distance. So if the light is 8 feet to the first person, and the last person is another 8 feet behind that...the last person (being twice as far from the light) is only getting 1/4 of the light.

This is why, when you are lighting a group, it's important to have then relatively the same distance to the light, or as close as you can get them. Or, use more than one light.

I know what you were going for with #1, but that shot does require more than one light, or better ambient light.

But either way, the exposure needs to be brighter.

Aggressor · Sep 23, 2008

Yeah the underexposure was pretty bad. I metered for the ambient but was hoping I could get away with one flash to fill in both groups... Stupid inverse square rule

!

Hopefully I can schedule a reshoot with them.They won't be able to identify this as underexposure but this set really bothers me. I had to wait for one of the family members to arrive to get the entire group photo so I shot the smaller groups and had plenty of light to work with (the girls, dad & mom) so I'm satisfied with that set. By the time he arrived... very little light.

zeroskillz · Sep 23, 2008

curves? or was that bringing out the noise...

Aggressor · Sep 23, 2008

Yep. Curves are as good as they'll get without introducing an unacceptable level of noise... I wonder if Noise Ninja will help. Hmmm... This may make a good business case to get a copy of it...