Photographing a salon & employees?

[ahanlon]

I am new to photography, I have done a couple of sessions for fun and one of the people from my session recommended me to a local salon where I live, which they would like me to take some photos of the girls inside the salon. Does anyone have any ideas they could show me of this being done? Since I'm new I only shoot with a Canon t2i and my lenses only include the kit lens, nifty fifty and the 75-300mm telephoto lens. I don't have any lights or anything.. How would I work this? What should I buy to make this workout well? I think the photos will be used for their facebook page and maybe some flyers to advertise.

Thank you for looking, thank you for your responses

 

[photo_joe]

Well better glass would be a start or getting some flash units and remote triggers so that you can position the flashes where they give you the best light for the shoot. With the kit lenses you will have issues if you don't get enough light and raising the ISO to high to compensated could cause a lot of extra noise.

 

[davisphotos]

Most salons I have seen like that track lighting, which leads to horrible hot spots. Unless the place happens to have some nice big windows and natural light coming in, it's going to be tricky to do without some lights. There are also lots of mirrors to contend with, which can be tricky when shooting an interior. If you are just photographing head shots of the girls in the salon, that will be a bit easier.

The mirrors I mentioned being a problem could also work out well for you-position your photo subject relatively close to the mirror, and will make a good reflector. Get a shoe mount flash, and either bounce it off the ceiling, or if there is a white wall oposite the mirrors, bounce it off that, and you will have relatively useable portrait lighting.

One of the biggest things when shooting portraits indoors is to watch your backgrounds. Make sure there is no junk on the counters, power cords dangling around or anything else distracting in the background. I would probably use the 50mm lens, it will help compress the background and blur it out.

Good luck, and have fun!

 

[ahanlon]

Thank you guys so much for your information! From what it looks like, the salon is decorated in a Spanish theme so it has a lot of earth tones of brown. I noticed from photos that there are windows, large ones actually however they look to be all on one side of the room in the main area... so that might be a problem right? I didn't expect something like this to fall into my lap so quickly so I haven't invested in lenses or anything like that. The salon owner sent me some examples of what they are looking for and it did include mainly head shots and the girls at work so I think I will be able to handle that, I just hope the lighting is good. I'm going to head in there tomorrow and see what the atmosphere is like.

Photo Joe, you recommended new glass, what would you recommend?