I’ve been slowly going through the remaining shots from the family portrait shoot I did last month (see previous posts: part 1 and part 2). Here’s the shoot write-up.

I spent a long time setting everything up; it was a challenge because I was in someone else’s house, space was limited and I was finding it difficult to create a setup I was happy with. The background light was causing the most difficulties, but I eventually decided to try using a shoot-through umbrella to give an even coverage and I think it worked really well; certainly a lot better than Jodie’s studio shoot. I don’t think I’m using enough power on the background light as I still need to do a lot of post-processing work to get the background as white as I want it. I think I’m just worried about blowing the background out too much and causing the edges of the subject to be burnt, so I’m not pushing it enough.

The rest of the set up was kept fairly simple; a softbox camera-left, quite low to the ground as many of the shots had the subject(s) seated and a sunfire reflector camera-right to open up the shadows. Below is a diagram showing the set up:

Here are the rest of the photos taken with my Canon 350D and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L @ f/13, 1/200, ISO 100:

As well as trying to improve the background lighting set up, I really need to ensure that I do everything I can during the shoot to limit the amount of post processing time. Making sure the subject is completely in front of the background, for example, saves a lot of time creating complicated masks around hair!