Kids portrait..... An exercize in patience......

[Stradawhovious]

I went to my Folk's place for the weekend to celebrate my youngest's birthday. My folks wanted to get a photo with all the kids to use as a Christmans Cards. I thought I would take advantage of the natural surroundings rather than get the standard "couch" pic.

Here is what I came up with.

I learned a couple of things too.

1. Herding the cats is difficult. It's even more difficult when Grandma and Grandpa are making S'mores while you are trying to keep the attention of children.

2. Speedlights just don't cut it for outdoor group shots (not the speedlights I have anyways). The lighting was rather flat out of necessity. I either couldn't, or don't know how to get enough lighting from one speedlight to get good portrait quality lighting on a groups, so I went the two light approach to try and get enough on the whole group. As it stands, it was still a little under exposed.

Either way, the 'rents are happy with it, so I consider it somewhat of a success. Hopefully by this time next year I have some sutible strobes.

Either way it was fun experimenting with mixing artificial light with ambient. I metered for the sunset, then stopped down and exposed for the subject. It was a good time, with much learned.

 

[mc1979]

I think the hardest thing is getting a group of children to look at the camera all at once!! You pulled that off, all except the little guy in front, but he's at least facing the camera..LOL I shot four this weekend and the Granddad wanted to get a shot with all four at once..not one single pic of them all looking at the same time.. uggh..

 

[Stradawhovious]

I think the hardest thing is getting a group of children to look at the camera all at once!! You pulled that off, all except the little guy in front, but he's at least facing the camera..LOL

Yeah, that was a feat in and of itself. In regards to the little guy, I'm lucky to have gotten him in front of the camera at all! He's pretty shy.