This past Sunday, Ryan and I met up with our friends, Allison and Jay, at their house to take their family photos.
Sunday morning was very rainy and it looked like we would not be able to do as many photos outdoors as we had hoped.
We packed up our cameras and lenses, hopped in the car, make a quick stop at Henry’s to purchase a new SB-400 flash (we only had one external flash (SB-600) and were going to be shooting with two cameras) and headed out to Al and Jay’s house.
We arrived at 2pm to find the family scrambling about, hair being done, ribbons being tied, and curlers being removed. We sat and had a coffee and noticed that the rain had completely cleared and the sun was coming out. We decided to do outdoor photos first in case the rain came back.
We ended up taking almost all of the photos on the backyard deck, shooting toward the yard. Looking back at the photos now, I can see that this was a poor choice as the images were quite hazy with the sunlight. The position of the sun wasn’t great that time of day, which caused a lot of blown out images and haze. Luckily, not all of the photos were taken in that exact situation. Also, the photos that were affected were mostly correctible with some adjusting in Lightroom. I will definitely pay more attention to the position of the sun next time.
I did happen to take some photos towards the house with Jay and his two kids, which turned out quite nicely. The colour ended up looking great and I was very happy with them.
We broke up some of the shooting so that I took photos of Jay with his two kids while Ryan took photos of Allison and her daughter. Then I took the three kids away and did their photos while Ryan went with Allison and Jay for some couple shots.
I finished off my photos for the day by taking some of Allison and Jay relaxing in the house.
All in all it was a good day for learning in a real-life situation. I’ve never worked with 3 kids and 2 parents at once before. It was an interesting experience. Parents are always looking to see if their kids are behaving, which makes them not look in the same direction as the kids. Kids also act up more when they are in the large group with the family and act more natural when they are just with the other kids and the photographer.
I’m looking forward to more experiences with family portraiture and more opportunities to work with different family units and group environments.
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