So heres the story, my neighbor visited me today with his 7 month old son today.

It's the first time i've seen him (yes i know, i'm a bad neighbor.. been really busy with work and other stuff).

We've talked for awhile and i offered to take some pictures of their newborn and them with my camera. ( I wanted to practice too, perfect subject)


But here's the thing.. I just realized i don't know crap about portraiture Wanted some advice from you guys, tips and positions etc.

I'll have to work with natural window lighting. I don't have access to any reflectors etc.. I don't have much gear.. all i have is the equipment listed in my sig (minus the Sigma 30 f/1.4 since it's going back to amazon for back focusing issues.) The only other light i have is a Speedlite 430 EX II with a omni bounce.

Any tips is appreciated since i'll be meeting them at 9:30 tomorrow morning.

Thanks!

hmmm I´m surprised that somebody is running around with a 50D and such cool lenses and stuff and pretends to be knowing nothing about portraiture. I gtg I´ll post something constructive later on mby

I've only been taking pictures of inanimate objects and animals/ landscape. Not much people photography.

heres some with my old d40

I guess you are like me then but I believe portraits of pets are so much harder to shoot than babies.
From what I have seen and judging by the awesome baby portraits Mew posted about I guess eyes are extremely important so all you probably have to do is try to focus on the baby's eyes and use 50mm and 100mm (for tight head shots). Depends on how hyper the baby is your 100mm IS could be very useful in low light with its image stabilizer.

Some excellent pictures you have there man. Good ideas.



Haha, well it's not the baby i'm worried about.. it's really the the baby + parent shots.

The baby, i'll just do all the cliché shots :D, shot of feet etc.

Anyway, thanks for the tip though! I'll keep that in mind.

Anymore?

You can do good with just that one strobe, just make sure the lighting is even and everything is soft. No harsh shadows.

Yeah, i'll be using my omni-bounce. Gonna strap a index card to it for some catch light. The problem is.. the only surface i can bounce off of is the ceiling since their entire house is painted. But then, i'll be using natural window light majority of the time.. I'll probably lower the power of the flash and use it as a fill flash.

Thanks for the tip.

Don't use flash unless you have a large soft box. It should always be the very last resort if you have natural light available.

You won't need fill flash if you are shooting by window light mate and you are exposing correctly :/

This post was edited by lithfkn on Mar 21 2010 06:14pm

:O.

Any tips on perfecting exposure? I wanna get it as good as i can straight out from the camera, don't wanna mess with it too much in post.

Edit: And i don't have a soft box lol

This post was edited by Eek on Mar 21 2010 06:16pm