Week 19: Just a Portrait

Sometimes you just want to take a portrait. . . that was this week. We've had a lot going on lately and have had a lot on our minds. Plus, Jonah is currently sporting a fresh haircut, so I thought I'd just try and get a portrait. Unfortunately, with Jonah, those are often the harder shots to get. He's not very fond of sitting still and looking at the camera. I finally had him entertained by the big flashing lights tonight, but that meant he wasn't really looking at me. Oh well, we went with the 3/4 profile shot! Some week, maybe next, I'll get back to the bear photo. . .

Jonah's sleep issues are slowly getting better with much effort from mom and dad. Unfortunately, I can still easily count the number of times he's slept through the night in the past month on one hand.

So, this week was more about me trying a lighting technique that I've been wanting to try. It worked to some extent, but focusing lights on a target that moves as much as Jonah is futile at best. I've read many lighting blogs lately about setting a fill exposure with a softbox and then layering a harder light source over it to bring more specularity and pop to the face - that's the idea above marginally executed. So this is a Profoto head in a 3x4' softbox camera right at f/2.8 and a Profoto head in a beauty dish camera right in front of the softbox, more or less focused on his face, at f/5.6. He was far enough from the lights, though, that it started to merge together more than I wanted. I think I needed a grid on the beauty dish, which I don't own. OR, a subject that was a bit more cooperative and stationary! The photo is shot with my 24mm at f/5.6.

Some more "keepers" from the shoot are here if you are interested. Many of them I kept purely because they made me laugh.