Atlanta Photographer Sunday: Twin toddlers on my neck:-)

This Sunday I was left at home with my lovely two daughters (we have twins), wife went to therapeutic shopping, and had great opportunity to do nothing and just watch our kids. Well, it lasted for about 5 minutes, after we have played for a while, and.. I’ve jumped to what I really like to do:

Brought 3 Paul CC. Buff monolights (1x800ws, 2x1800ws) and placed in 3 corners of our living room. One with small dish-like reflector pointing to a wall and a ceiling (far center of the photo), second (on the right) with standard 8” reflector was aimed inside a room, and third one (left) with 43” parabolic umbrella mounted was highlighting the floor, placed just opposite of the second light. I do not use a flash meter, so no light ratio information will be given.

atlanta photographer sunday photoshoot setup

Atlanta photographer strobe lighting setup

As usual, I did the setup just like I feel it would work for me. Also, because kids where moving all around I was shooting form all corners, there was not real need to set any particular ratio. Just different softness of the light sources, so center light was more like a fill light, and second and third was main and hair light, depends what direction I shoot from.

My favorite portrait lens was used, 70-200mm F2.8 IS L, set at F4.5. No direct sun, so daylight was not counted: shutter was set to a camera’s maximum x-sync speed at 1/250 sec.

Few things I liked in such setup:

fast, 5 minutes to set everything
kids does not need to stay still or to look at you. they play, I shoot – everyone is happy.
because strobe light were much more intense then daylight, the real exposure was equal to a flash duration, which was around 1/800-1/1200 sec, meaning no motion blur.

Now, the photos. Daughters were really happy to play for me: they did a yoga poses (learned watching us, our usual evening rejuvenation includes 45 minutes of yoga), some cleaning and exploring.
Enjoy: