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Potrait
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Hi Maybe some of you can help me,
My Wife and I had a new addition to the family a beautiful baby girl that’s two little girls under two now.
I am looking to do a portrait of the two kids but not sure if i have the equipment or skills to do this
I have a cannon 450d with no external flash Canon Lens 50mm F/1.8 II the standard kit lens and a Tamron
Macro lens.
I was thinking of using the 50m lens my main worries is lighting and background. I want a white background and the only lighting i have really is natural light some lamps and etc is that enough? Do i need a flash?
What can i use as a background ?a friend suggested altering the custom white balance setting on the camera by taking a picture of a grey
Any help would be great something that will not cost a fortune.
Thanks
Johnhttp://www.vividlight.com/articles/1615.htm
This should give you an idea about lighting styles for portraits, you should be fine using natural light – you can reflect with a big piece of card or cover a large piece of cardboard in tin foil!
You could hang a curtain or white sheet for the background? If you use aperture priority you should be able to blur the background a bit in order to keep focus on the subjects, should be easy enough with a 50mm lens…
Consider some black and white, as well as colour, as it can look brilliant and draw more attention to the subject.
Good luck!
have taken bucket loads of portraits of the off spring of friends, usually do the whole natural portrait thing of running around a garden after them, but when needed I’ll use a plain background and a Nikon 50mm 1.4 to throw background out of focus and window light to light the kid(s) in question, sometimes need a piece of Styrofoam to bounce light onto them but your kit should more than cover it, test different camera and flash settings with different backgrounds to find the ideal for your needs, get your wife to stand in for kids so as not to bore them and make them resent the photog dad until your ready to shoot (a friends dad was a portrait photog and still hates having her pic taken as a result of hours holding or re doing poses as he set up), good luck and hope you get THE shot.
Congratulations-
That macro lens might come in handy for the new one-
If you keep a camera handy you’re sure to get something-
Not sure that really small infants are portrait material, in the usual sense of the word-
there are pictures to be taken, but a lot of the good ones seem to be play on scale,
where we’re invited to notice how small they are-
But they soon grow up…One thing that destroys portraits of kids, for me, is to picture them in their normal clothes-
it seems like kids won’t go out these days without being plastered with logos or graphics,
which can be a very competitive element in a picture-
I’m not saying it can’t work,
just that it might make your concerns about photographic technique a bit redundant when you look at the pictures.
Often a conversion to b/w can help with some of the colours too-Window light is good, especially if you can keep the background clear- for a portrait, that is-
Of course, pictures containing the normal detritus of a child’s life will prove to be invaluable later, after it’s all gone,
and you scour the backgrounds for details that will bring it all back-
but these are less portraits than normal family snaps,
of normal daily life, of people caught with their guard down, in their own environment-
and using a faster, longer lens will help to throw the background out of focus-The white background screams ‘professional child portrait’
fine if you want that, but not entirely necessary-
given a decent lens, good light, and constant access,
you should be able to do far better within the normal context of a child’s surroundings.
A sturdy coffee table under a window that has a lot of lace or net curtains might be all the studio you need-
especially if you follow the advice given earlier about a reflector-Because they’re small, you might want to get down on the floor with them-
looking down at them says more about you than them, maybe-
I’m sure you know all this stuff already, but just thought I’d mention some of my prejudices…
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