Week 11: Two Year Portraits: Take Two

I have a standing request to get a shot of Jonah holding his Pooh Bear. It randomly turns out that Kristi and I have the same photo with the same "Pooh" from when we were around 1 year old. I tried this week - didn't happen - Jonah was not interested. More on that later, but you'll hopefully see the set of three photos up here very soon.

SO, with a blown attempt at that shot, I did get a chance to Get a couple more portraits of Jonah at age 2. I really liked this one as it shows his personality quite well and, it was the lighting scheme that I was going for.

I have a bit of a challenge with taking portraits of Jonah in a "studio" environment. See, my "studio" is our downstairs family room. Which, for living in Manhattan, I am endlessly fortunate to have. However, Jonah sees that space as his play room. Namely, that's where his trains live. So, when Daddy invades his space and sets up these enormous flashing things, he's not very patient. He's not angry - he's just silly and does not want to sit still. He runs off to get various toys, jumps around, and basically acts like a two year old boy. So, I set up a shot, try my best, but Jonah runs the show. It's a bit like shooting a very small, very fast fish in a very large barrel with a BB gun - there are a LOT of misses. Jonah had great fun this time jumping into the background fabric - which is lit here with two lights to make it go white. There are plenty of shots with him blown completely out. I'm so thankful I spent the money for a proper background stand, because the rigged thing I was using before (two light stands with a metal closet rod attached as a crossbar by bungee cords) would have come crashing down on his head.

Here are the very few other "keepers" from two days of trying - if you are interested:
http://web.me.com/rwdavi/rwdavi/Albums/Pages/A_Better_Use_of_Light.html

About this shot - Daddy got his Fathers Day present early. I stumbled into a very good deal on a set of two Profoto studio strobes and I've been having a very good time getting to know them. My photographer friends out there will understand what the previous sentence means. For everyone else - while it's an entry level model, I got something akin to a Mercedes in studio light terms. This is actually only one of them. This is my 24-70mm at f/8 with one Profoto camera right in a 60" softlighter umbrella. There is a silver reflector camera left. The background is lit by two speedlights - one camera left and one camera right.