‘Tis the season and demand is high, so I’ll be back at it again following my engagement with a local school. This time the stakes are closer to home, which makes the stress level both better and worse. The gig? Shooting family portraits for my girlfriend’s very large extended family. Oh yeah. Oh my.
The setup is going to be in the living room of an aunt & uncle’s house, where the couch is in front of some large picture windows that look out into the back yard. It’s a nice setting, with good natural light, and the room is long enough (it stretches into the kitchen area) that I can get sufficient distance from the subjects to shoot without having to worry about using my widest angle, and then battling distortions.
The original plan called for a portrait of all the youngin’s, but that quickly grew (as these things tend to do) to include addition portraits of each family group. And I fully expect that once we’re there on-site, it will evolve to include some of those wacky family portraits that happen when everyone gets a bit goofy. Frankly, it ought to be a lot of fun, which equates to the lower stress level. On the other hand, this is a group that I simply have to impress – even more than the regular clients, due to the personal stakes. The stress meter goes back up!
Kidding aside, this should be a straight-forward shoot. I’ll be using essentially the same lighting setup from the first batch of Christmas portraits at the school; A & B lights in a 2:1 ratio, setup up stands with shoot-through umbrellas. C light is a bit trickier, since the BG this time is the wall/windows of the room. I can either stick it in a corner behind them, angled in for some hair light, or perhaps even stick it outside the window, shooting through the glass.
It’s the glass that will provide the most challenge – controlling reflections will be the primary struggle. In a large studio space this might not be so difficult, but in a living room, placement of lights is limited by the physical layout. Still, I’m sure that everything will fall into place.
I plan on using the 7D (to control the lights) and the 28-135mm. The length of the room should let me zoom a bit, compressing the scene somewhat.
