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this was two 42" diffused bounce umbrellas:
main at ~40°. The other, on the same side, just to the side of the camera, about 10°
R0ck3tm@n said:
really didn't want the talent right up against the backdrop, however I didn't make the backdrop and I was asked to "frame the scene" with the 'r' church logo, and trim of garland left, top and right. While this wasn't my preference, it was leadership's preference so I obliged. Next year I plan on suggesting a larger backdrop and that they brand it top-left or top-right so it isn't blocked.
Lighting, posing etc pretty much covered, so a comment on the logo, which you mentioned. It's an orange blob of distraction that is going to be a distraction pretty much anywhere you locate it in the frame. IMO I would seriously try to dissuade them from affixing it to the background. Perhaps incorporate something recognizable from the Church as the background, or if they are determined to have the logo on the print, then place it as a watermark at lower opacity, along with the year.
R0ck3tm@n said:
I generally like this lighting,except that your daughter's face seems overly bright. A bit of burn tool in lightroom, like three passes at Minus 0.4, ought to help. She's got a lighter complexion than Mother has, and I think the light might have been angled downward a bit, so that she was in slightly stronger light than were you two adults.Still, this light imbalance could/can be corrected in post-processing with a bit of selective correction.
As far as the lighting, it's okay! It reveals dimensionality, through shadowing. On this post, I think having the girl stand on an apple box, to bring her head and shoulders up higher, would be considered a good posing adjustment at the time of shooting, since the head heights are not working that well in the horizontal camera framing. The dress, and her shoulders/head, are just too low in relation to the adults heads for this pose. This is a classic type of formal portrait pose, and there are some ways to make the pose look its best. Head heights are one thing; shadows are another. The need for a fill light would have been almost totally eliminated, had the girl been elevated, and brought back, physically closer to the body of Mom and Dad, which would have eliminated the shadow that she caused on Dad's T-shirt and pants. When posing formal groups like this, many times (most) the people have to be very close to one another, as in actually touching, front-to-back. Again, had the child been closer to the parents, the shadow would have been lessened in width, yet still present. Still...the shadow adds a degree of "realness" through dimensionality being revealed. My issue is the daughter's overly bright face, and the way she's riding low in the frame, and is cropped off too much. She has a beautiful lace-type Christmas dress, but not very much of her, or her clothing, is shown.
An on-axis fill light, right next to or behind the camera, used to be standard for this type of shooting...it is what it is...it can make things look flat, and dimension-less (as in the above tutorial Braineack linked to)--especially when the photographer uses large umbrellas or large softboxes, which FLOOD the shooting area with lights. I was actually trained and worked in old-school formal portrait lighting; the biggest problem I see with the linked-to tutorial is that the photographer is using using modern-era, VERY large light sources with a classic, old-fashioned portrait lighting setup, which is often best with SMALL lights, like 16- to 20-inch parabolic metal reflectors with diffusion material. Lights that caused actual, visible, obvious shadows on noses,cheeks,chins,dimples,lips,etc..