Week 51: Yet Another Portrait

As I mentioned in the last post, I wanted to close out these last few weeks with a few portraits of Jonah to capture him at this point in life. I wanted to capture him as he appears physically - he's just changing so quickly! However, I didn't fully anticipate just how much personality would come through, as well. I'm not sure why I didn't foresee that. . . guess it was the photographer side of me thinking more than the dad. Jonah oozes personality, both for better and for worse, at every moment.

This photo is more or less what I wanted to get this week. . . probably closer to the less, but again, that's the photographer speaking more than the dad. The light is more or less right. The reflection is more or less right. However, the boy and the prop are a bit different. I had a different train in mind. Jonah decided that he wanted a ball. Great! Jonah has been taking a soccer class at school lately and it's all he really talks about at home; a ball was a great prop for this portrait. Then he decided he didn't want the ball. I tried to encourage him to "make a picture" with the ball - bad idea. He eventually chose this train and instantly started driving it in circles around the white plexiglass "table" it's sitting on. The sheet of plexiglass is 2'x4' and the rate at which he was moving covered the two feet window of shot opportunity faster than I could get the camera focused and the shutter depressed.

Kristi was a saint and helped me get him wrangled. He stood and "smiled" for a fleeting moment and I just got the shot in before he was off again. Jonah is where I wanted him - the train, not even close. Oh well, this is a more accurate portrayal of Jonah than what I had envisioned! Jonah is very opinionated anymore and is constantly on the go. Getting him to do what you would like him to do at the time you would like him to do it is becoming increasingly difficult. I have a sneaking suspicion that the terrible twos will much more likely be the terrible threes for Jonah. We'll see.

Photo - this is a piece of white seamless paper as the backdrop and a sheet of white plexiglass set on two footstools as a table. Lighting is pretty simple - there is a gridded strobe camera right and focused on the seamless. It's aimed low to give the gradient as you go up. The key is a strobe in a 53" octabank camera right. 135mm lens at f/8.