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You can do it! Just take a zillion. They probably want something a bit better than a snapshot they could take, and they trust you. Have fun with it, and just keep shooting. And ask LL and ellen for tips!
Not sure what you've read and such, but I'll throw this out there; use a very long lens. The longer the better, and then use an aperture of 5.6 to 8. The very long length is flattering (for some reason the compression of space is very flattering for portraits - not sure why, it is just so! ), it will also allow you to be a little further back which can make your subjects more comfortable and most of all will render a very pleasing and oof background. For portraits, this is really important.Good luck and have fun!
In additon to all the other good advice I'd also be careful in setting the stage. A simple uncluttered background for indoor or outdoor shots I've found makes the best portraits in my limited experience. Are these indoor shots? What sort of flash do you have? Edited to add: I think you'll do great. You have a good eye for still life composition and good exposure technique. You just need to apply it to a person. I'd use my 50mm with my crop sensor body for these shots if I was in your shoes.
I think we're doing outside and I am concerned about backdrop. I have two parks in mind but we're going to have to stage it carefully so that there are trees in the background and not the playground, other kids, buildings, etc. Thanks for the edit. I appreciate it. I hope I don't overthink it too much because that can lead to over-staging... at the end of the day I need to keep it simple and apply the same principles that makes other photos good. I just don't want to screw up.I'm probably going to use a combination of my 18-55mm and my 55-200mm depending on the situation and how I feel after the test shots.
My other lenses are an 18-55 and a 75-300. I think the 75-300 works much better at portraits than the smaller focal length lens. If you can't find any trees with leaves on them or a good evergreen background for the shot, I've had good luck shooting against a wall - particularly one that had some visual interest like a tile mosaic. I assume that you will place the child on a blanket for the shots. Again, I think that simple with careful thought given to the colour and texture are important - particularly considering what the child will be wearing.
Some baby/kid photographers put things on top of their camera for the baby to look at and make them smile. I saw one that was a red scrunchie and she put those plastic eyes on it so it looked a little like Elmo.
I am not doing that.
Well, that really did not turn out the way I hoped. Oh well. I really hope my cousins find some of these to be suitable. I don't know. Here are some shots but I'll probably take them down again in a day or two. Ugh.Edited to remove photos. Turns out they really like them! Phew.
Damn, missed the photos! Glad they liked them. So in what way did the session not meet your expectations?
Hey, thanks for posting them up again. I think they're good shots - I particularly like the walking between the parents shot and the bench shot. Using a wide open aperture to get the isolation/blurry back ground makes it tough to get the focus just right. It looks like the light was a bit challenging - what time of the day did you take the shots? It looks like mid day to me. I struggled with similar lighting at Thanksgiving and ended up with some overexposed faces. One possible strategy on a sunny day like that is to pose the group in solid shade and either use a fill flash to brighten the people up uniformly or don't use a flash and accept that the background will be a bit overexposed.
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Topic: Pressure! (Read 17562 times)
