Tracing Light Photography

TSC Portraits

Last week The Seed Company hired me to do some portraits to go along with the theme of their next newsletter: Using Investment in Scripture to Disciple Children. Tanya had some specific ideas of the kinds of portraits she wanted, but the logistics of getting some appropriate models proved to be difficult. Fortunately it all worked out Saturday afternoon for a small window of time.

The house where we did the photo shoot had soft window light, and white ceilings — which meant that a bit of bounce flash off the ceiling was all I needed for soft light. If I had more time, I could have gotten a bit more fancy with the lighting to give more contrast, or some back lighting, but time was very limited. I didn’t use most of the extra lighting gear that I brought (thanks anyway, Jeff). This shoot reminded me (or, rather, forced me) to try the simplest setup first: look first for natural light, and beyond that try the simplest strobe setup first (in this case bouncing with flash on-camera using ETTL). I metered for ambient light, and did a bit of flash exposure compensation when needed. It would have been interesting to see what I could have done with multiple strobes; I think I could have achieved some more dynamic lighting, which may have been more interesting, but at the same time more distracting? Not sure.

See the photos. Perhaps one of my many avid readers has a comment.