PITA christmas card

slow231

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there was a great picture a few weeks back of a baby playing with some christmas lights. So I wanted to do a similar thing for our xmas card this year. pitched the idea to the wife and got the green light. our house is really small (think apartment size), and i wanted to really isolate the shot from the background (there's a couch ~5 ft behind him in the shot) so i ended up using a a gelled overhead OCF. fired off a couple of test shots with a stuffed animal to get the flash power/temp right. the overhead light makes some harsh shadows but with the christmas lights close enough it's fine. so i plop the kid down and he want's nothing to do with the lights. on top of that his latest tricks are separation anxiety if you leave the room and removing hats. ended up with a ton of shots of a pissed off hatless baby crawling towards me. the lighting was pretty dark as i wanted to drop out a lot of the background and not compete with the christmas lights. but this made his lower face lighting so dependent on the christmas light placement which was all over the place as he squirmed, crawled, cried and fought everything. I was looking for something pretty specific, but i guess sometimes knowing what you want before the shoot can be a bad thing. took two sessions and way more setup than necessary but anyhow here is the result:

i-q2H82VT-XL.jpg


still not quite up to par with the test shots on the stuffed animal, but it was the best of the bunch. He rarely picked up the lights, so the face lighting here came in PP (as you can probably tell). I appeased him with some goldfish crackers on the floor (which were photoshopped out). in any case CC welcome as usual. and extra credit to anyone who gives me a shoulda/coulda that really makes me want to redo these (because i already ordered the cards :greenpbl:!). i didn't expect too much face, i have a better face shot for the inside of the card. I just wanted him looking down with his girly eyelashes, but i probably would take a little more face if i had a shot with it.
 
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Adorable, but wood flooring or at least not carpet would have been preferable. And though I'm sure your son won't be getting lead poisoning I did read something recently about xmas lights + babies can = lead poisoning.. don't mean to be negative Nancy.
 
I dread shooting my own X-mas card photo...I did it just last week. As you are finding, kids in that age range are usually quite challenging. My photo this year was my wife and I, 4 year old son and 19 month old twin girls...plus a puppy. On top of that, the battery in my remote shutter is dead so I had to set the 10 second timer and run up to the camera for each shot.
 
Big Mike, I tried to get the dog in our pictures but he would not have any of that. I did get a picture of my 3 year old holding him with what looks like a choke hold. :mrgreen:
 
Adorable, but wood flooring or at least not carpet would have been preferable. And though I'm sure your son won't be getting lead poisoning I did read something recently about xmas lights + babies can = lead poisoning.. don't mean to be negative Nancy.
my wife said wood floor too. but that would have meant going to the in-laws and therefore spoiling the shot for them. Thanks for the head's up on the lead issue. he should be alright, i only let him eat 4-5 bulbs and some of the wire.

I dread shooting my own X-mas card photo...I did it just last week. As you are finding, kids in that age range are usually quite challenging. My photo this year was my wife and I, 4 year old son and 19 month old twin girls...plus a puppy. On top of that, the battery in my remote shutter is dead so I had to set the 10 second timer and run up to the camera for each shot.
lol dogs are pretty terrible to shoot too. we have 3 and doing a family shot is a pain. you're really running the full gauntlet with your card. puppy, babies, kid, and all in a group shot that you're in. hope it turned out alright!
 
absolutely love it! Though the shots where kids are playing with lights always make me nervous, but thats just me! Nicely done.
 
Adorable! Amazing how much work goes into a shot like this. Thanks for sharing the details. I bribe my grand daughter with fruit snacks.
 
Love the photo. hate the font. The cheap font really drops it down a notch.
 
^Agree 100%. The lime green is not working, at all. Try a shade of gold/brown that accents the lights.
 

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