My kids are always good for a photo or two. They won’t sit still very long so I typically have 5 minutes or less to get take a photo. This doesn’t leave much time to experiment with different lighting and poses. My son was gracious enough to spend 5 minutes with me tonight so I could take a few portraits. This is one that I thought came out well.
I try not to give them too much direction but let them just do what they want. I find that if I try and pose them or get them to do stuff they will overdo it and it won’t look natural. So I just talk with them and start clicking away. If it wasn’t for the flash firing away they wouldn’t even know I was taking photos the whole time. I use this same approach to get them to eat vegetables. Just start talking while I slip some carrots on their plate.
I shot this with a Canon 5DII at f/7.0 and 1/125th second. I used a Canon 580EXII flash with a Lumiquest Softbox III and triggered it with Cactus v4’s. I positioned the flash and softbox camera right about 2 feet away and set it on 1/32nd power. I did very little work in Photoshop with this one.
Great photo of Zach, Matt! I want hard copies for my office and photo album!
@Tracker – You got it!