Christmas Portraits in a Living Room

I took some Christmas portraits of our girls this weekend. These were not done in a studio, just our living room. I put up a background stand and a black material at one end of the room. Then the kids were placed forward of the background 6 to 8 feet. This was done to keep the spill from the lights off the background.

The lights were one or two shoot through umbrellas. The main light was on the left and closer. The fill was on the right, a little farther away, and two stops lower. These were SB900’s as remotes. They were triggered by the on camera flash that contributed nothing to the exposure.

The trick here is getting the kids away from the background, and feathering the light to that most of the light goes across the girls creating interesting shadow, and keeping the light off the kids.

This can be pulled off in any home with enough space to get the kids off the background. With less space you will see the pattern or wrinkles in the background. If you would like pictures like these of your kids, please contact me.

Seattle Center Fountain

There is a lot going on around the Space Needle in Seattle. There is the Music Experience, the Science Museum, a Children’s Museum, a concert hall, and amusement park, and (probably some other stuff I missed) this great big monster fountain. Taken from the right angle, you can see it and the Space Needle in the same picture.

Space Needle and Fountain

One of the cool things about this fountain is that you can go right up to it. It is not in the middle of a lake like most fountains. It is at the bottom of a big concrete bowl. It looks like a crater from when an alien ship landed from outer space, and they turned it into a fountain. Kind of Men in Black was my thinking. Anyway, kids loved this fountain.

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Back to my Roots

Spring is finally here. Well, it has been for a bit, but my backyard has been slow to bloom. I have often taken pictures of flowers from my backyard, but it seems like it has been forever since I have been able to do that. We finally got the tulips to bloom, and I took a couple of pictures.

Rain on Yellow 

I had the girls help me. Their favorite thing is to get the spray bottle and spray everything in the backyard, except the flowers I am trying to photograph. It had rained earlier in the day, but we needed to add a bit of water by the time I took these in the early evening.

Rain on Red 

Once again, I am taking these with my Nikon 50mm f/1.8. I love the bookah that I get from that lens. I can get the focus better with this lens too. I am not convinced that my Tamron 17-50 focuses properly. I am looking at sending it in. So, it probably means that I will be using the niffty 50 for most of my pictures after sending the Tamron in. But that’s ok. It is sometimes a little too big when taking pictures of the kids, I have to back up further than I want to, but I still like the pictures I get from it of them.

Big Little Jump 

These two were the reason I picked up a DSLR in the first place, so it is good that I am getting back to taking pictures of them. I have been trying to concentrate on getting portrait pictures for a new portfolio that I haven’t taken¬†many pictures of my kids lately. But now that it is nice out again, we will go for¬†more walks and hikes, which will present more¬†oportunities for pictures than just the sidewalk in front of our house.

Behind the Railing