Last-minute Portraits

Took a few “impromptu” portraits today.  These have been planned for a while because my daughter is getting ready to fly to Africa to visit family and we wanted to take a few portraits for her to print and take with her.  Due to the busy-ness of our household lately we just hadn’t gotten around to taking pictures but now things are down to the wire — her flight is in the wee hours Tuesday morning.  So, these became impromptu portraits — grab the gear, throw some makeup on, round up a few assistants (family members) to help, and head to the backyard before *all* the light is gone.

Lizzie Portrait #2 155mm, f/2.8, 1/180s, ISO 100

These images were both taken with an off-camera flash high camera front and left Joe McNally style (Joe McNally personally helped us light one of my other daughters a couple weeks ago — see posts here and here).  The flash had a diffuser on it (Joe McNally’s recommendation) and was shot at 1/4 power through a white shoot-through umbrella just barely out of the frame.  A white reflector was held low and right, also just out of the frame.  I normally default to using a 1/4 CTO gel on the strobe in shots like this with warm daylight.  However, given the already warm color of my daughter’s skin I didn’t gel the flash at all and it proved to be the right call.  Once we dialed in the power on the strobe we took about 10 shots using two backgrounds and decided we had what we needed.

Lizzie Portrait #1 78mm, f/2.8, 1/180s, ISO 100

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