Picture a Week Project - Week 7

Confidence:

I'm so happy!

This past weekend was my son's first communion which gave me the opportunity to hold a portrait session in front of the church at a gazebo at the local park. I was excited I would be shooting on a sunny day but in a shaded area, how would I approach this? Hmmmm, let me think...photographic geek-type excitement.

I ended up using two speedlights. One was camera right at full power shooting into a silver lined umbrella and the second was camera left gobo'ed to prevent lens glare and shooting at 1/16th. Both were gelled with a 1/4 CTO to match the sun and give the subjects some warmth.

In general, I'm very pleased with how these turned out. There are a few rookie mistakes, my son was moving around not keeping the church in a consistent postion and I managed to cut off part of his foot in the shot above, but again, given how hard it is to keep an 8 year-old still I'm very pleased. On a side note, this was the first shoot I've done with him where he didn't use the standard all teeth smile which anyone with kids knows is phony and reveals nothing about the subject. This time we were able to get an expression which reveals a bit of his nature. I think I'm starting to get over the hump on this issue. The title for this post comes from his expression, he just has an air of confidence...it seemed to just work.

Let me know what you think, and please share your experience as well.

Week 6: Pride
Week 8: Baseball Fun