Family Photogs
We all got "new" cameras for Christmas 2015! Now we spend most of our weekends taking pictures and capturing life together. Most of the other photos i...
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We all got "new" cameras for Christmas 2015! Now we spend most of our weekends taking pictures and capturing life together. Most of the other photos in the account were taken during family photo outings.
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May, 2016Views
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Awards
Winner in Creative Family Photos Photo Challenge
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Behind The Lens
Location
My family and I are really just getting started with photography and having a lot of fun, so we don't have much in the way of a home studio. I usually prefer to get the kids outside, shooting with natural light, and soaking up some sunshine. We needed more of a controlled environment for this image, though, so we eventually came up with the idea to hang a black bed sheet over the closet door in our master bedroom as a makeshift backdrop for the shots.Time
It's usually late morning or early afternoon by the time we get around to taking shots on Saturdays.Lighting
There was natural light coming in through windows in the corner of the room, about 100 degrees to the right of the camera. We used a white reflector to bring softer light back in on the left.Equipment
Canon T5 with a Sigma 17-70 lens on a tripod, and the white side of a 5-in-1 reflector.Inspiration
My family and I have been using ViewBug's various contests and challenges for topics while we explore photography as a hobby. We look through the available photo topics during the week, brainstorm image ideas, poses, and shots for a couple days, and then use our time together on the weekend to put together the shots we need. Then I work on compiling and compositing anything that's needed to bring our ideas to life or better fit the requirements for the contest or challenge we're entering. This specific image was the result of the brainstorming for a couple of different ViewBug challenges, including the Creative Family Portrait challenge (which we won!!!). There was one about taking a picture of a photographer as well, so I suggested during our brainstorming that maybe we could take care of two contests with one image and "show off" our Christmas presents in a crazy sort of family portrait. Some of the concept for the effects used in post actually came from a shot my cousin did back in college. He has a high-contrast, black and white self-portrait leaning over his best camera at the time. To this day, it's one of my favorite pictures of him. Once we saw how our image was coming together, we chose to soften the shot a little bit and leave a hint of the original colors.Editing
We actually took 5 separate shots, marking out invisible points for each photographer to aim their camera and snapping off a few quick shots of each person to ensure we had the details and lighting we wanted for each one. Then I composited them together in PhotoShop, based on a sketch we'd mocked up during our prep work.In my camera bag
Relatively speaking, not a lot. While all 5 of us got "new" cameras for Christmas 2015, none of them are pro-level and we don't have a lot of extras. My Canon T5, with the Sigma 17-70 is my go-to kit. Beyond that, I've just got a 75-300 kit lens and a 50mm f1.8 prime that I'm just starting to play with. My wife took over the Canon XTi that I had, with 28-55 and 55-200 kit lenses. We also have a Canon Powershot SX410, SX600 (I think), and a VTech Kidizoom for our youngest. The reflector we used was new for Christmas as well. A hot shoe flash that doesn't get much use, a small tripod, a few extra batteries, and three camera bags round out our little family photography stash.Feedback
The only real issue we ran into with this image is something I assume to be a pretty common problem when photographing people, and kids especially. Getting natural poses and smiles out of them can be pretty difficult. I actually had to have them take a picture of a fixed point in the room in order to get their hands set naturally on the camera.
