Portraits and Dialogue

Ok... so I've been having this dilemma about lighting. I really would like to get some lighting to play with, but the cost is a bit more than I want to think about right now. I had read somewhere that getting daylight bulbs would be a good start so I got a couple of shop lights, an umbrella and tried it out. I wasn't incredibly impressed with my first attempts in which I used 2 regular halogens and 8 inch shop light reflectors (and also had my user defined setting on which ups the saturation in camera) directly on the subjects (myself and kids). That set up gave me these photos. Not bad for a first attempt with some fabric store clearance bin backdrops (very very small width so we were sitting and slouching for most of these). It's also because of this lighting (read: harsh) that I discovered my older son has 2 moles...gonna be just like dad in that respect.






Ok, so maybe those would have been ok if the saturation hadn't been so deep. I'm not sure. All I know is I was proud until my husband said something. I mean the lighting was at least pretty even, but what I was aspiring to here was along the lines of getting something akin to school portraits.

So my 2nd attempt had a much bigger backdrop and I decided to shoot my flash gun (Canon 580 EX Speedlite or however it's spelled) into an umbrella. I was using a stand instead of clipping the shop lights to the back of toddler chairs so I had a bit more height if I needed it and at least some adjustability. For the fill I tried to use one of the shoplights with the 60 Watt daylight bulb clipped on another stand, but I found that that ALMOST didn't make a darn difference - at one instance I turned off the daylight bulb and the result was practically identical.
I tried then using that for background light and then hair light - It wasn't working so well, but that's what practice is about I guess. I could have used my other shop light, but stuff was getting in the picture as it was. So with my flash gun set on ETTL, I got a pretty powerful flash bounced, (and I tried it at varying power as well)...the biggest challenge for me is always the timer and grabbing the baby and trying to pose properly to where I set the lights for in the time it takes for the timer to go off. Not easy - not only that but running back and forth I sweat my makeup right off...and well I just prove why I should not be a model lol.

But we had fun with this session at least and I got to try something different. This was more 'dramatic' lighting in some of these although the poses are still very 'mall studio' (which is not bad at all, I'd be lucky to get that!) The best news about all this is that I now have more photos of myself and the boys in the last 2 weeks than I had with them their whole lives. I do NOT like being in front of the camera.

Here are some of the results of that day's shots: