Week 5: Thomas!

Jonah is obsessed with trains. Perhaps it's because his mom and dad don't own a car and his primary mode of transportation is the subway? Or perhaps he's just a normal 2 year old boy? Regardless, the kid loves trains right now. So, I thought I should take a week and document his obsession before the winds change and he moves on to something else - because hey, you know, we boys do that. . . His train set stays downstairs in our family room where there is some room to set it up. He constantly asks to go downstairs - we know he wants to play with his trains. When it's time to go upstairs, he always says "Goodbye trains! See you tomorrow!"

Couple of other notes about this setup - along with trains, Jonah loves the train going through tunnels and going over his "mountain." So, I wanted to find a way to capture all of those elements in the shot.

Now for the photograph: This was actually a tough photo for me. I wasn't sure how to get all of these elements in and still make an interesting photograph. I thought about it quite a bit this week and thought I had it figured out. Nope. I set it up, pointed the camera, click - boring. The setup was wrong and the lighting was just terrible. Tweaking the setup was fairly easy. I came up with this look fairly quickly. Then the light.

I started out with a big light coming from behind and a spot on Thomas to highlight him as the subject. Flat. Boring. Then something hit me - I've read it a hundred times - if you want to make something interesting, don't light all of it. So, this week was an exercise in controlling light. There are three flashes in this shot. Can you find them?

This is one flash laying on the floor about 2 feet behind the back of the "mountain," pointed back at the camera. I flagged the camera right side as it was peaking around the back and causing a little flare. That is the light on the wall on the left giving separation to the trains going over the mountain. There is another flash on a stand with a snoot camera right dialed way down and zoomed all the way in to give a little light to the trains on the mountain. The third is gridded on a stand camera left and focused on Thomas.

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of this one.