Photography on Purpose

Every year Unum puts on events for the kids of employees at Easter and Christmas. Normally my friend and co-worker Kevin Riggs does the photo sessions of the kids with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. This year however Kevin begged off as he and his wife just had a new addition to the family and he was swamped with getting prepared. So he suggested to the committee that oversees the events that I might be interested in doing it this year.
I've never really done an event like this before and his briefing was rife with advice which let me know in no uncertain terms this was going to be quite a learning experience in handling a LOT of people in a big hurry. Like over a hundred kids with variations in a scheduled 3 hours - and that includes printing the selected shots. It doesn't take a math whiz to cipher I only had a few minutes with each kid.
I spent several days evaluating different lighting at home using my son for a test dummy thinking I could maybe get by with using my new Alien Bees ring flash. While it is a nice flash for that "edgy" look I decided that for kids it was little much and opted for a more traditional portrait lighting setup. Imagine that - tried and true turns out to be the best. So I settled on using a JTL D1000 with 42" Wescott softbox for the main, a JTL D1000 strobe with Amvona 54" strip softbox for fill and an Alien Bees B800 with snoot for the hairlight on a boom. The main was at about 40 degrees to subject about 4 feet away and at a height of 10 feet. The fill was placed at 70 degrees to the subjects right dead even to provide soft side fill from about 4 feet. The main I adjusted for f6.3, the fill for f4.0 and the hairlight for f2.8 at the subject position. I used my radio triggers on all strobes. The JTL's have a remote which made adjusting the power levels easy since I could enable the strobes individually to adjust power and confirm the levels with my Sekonics L558 flash meter triggering the strobes. Worked like a champ and lighting setup took only a few minutes.
I wondered if the folks assigned to help me wondered about the amount of stuff I hauled in, but I used almost all of it. I'm the type that believes I'd rather have it and not need it that need it and not have it.
I really did my homework on this one and I think it paid off in the little things. I had invested in a Gretag Macbeth Color Checker card and took my first test shot of the bunny so I could establish a basis for color correction and general exposure.

Bunny with Color Checker

The software I opted to use was a new Adobe product, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom . It was a trial by fire which it handled admirably with few glitches. Lightroom is designed for working photographers and focuses completely on getting the picture in, organized, "developed" and output to web or print. One of the features that I liked was the ability to watch a folder, automatically import the photo and apply default "develop" settings. My setup therefore depended on the using the Canon capture software to grab the photo from the camera the moment it was shot and transfer to a capture folder from which Lightroom would import the shot and apply the default settings. I obtained the default settings using the bunny with color checker photo to set the white balance, exposure levels, contrast - all the myriad details to make a good print. This was saved under a setting which Lightroom applied to every picture captured. Worked great! The general plan was to take 2 or 3 shots of each kid and have my assistant, Gina, show them in a comparison window built into Lightroom. This would allow the parents to select the pictures they preferred less and the one remaining would be the one which she would drag down into the "To Print" queue. That part didn't work as planned because of two things - Lightroom automatically gave focus to a new incoming shot and parents wanted more than their allotted 1 photograph. So she winged it and did a tremendous job working with the parents.
Speaking of assistants - the committee assigned Paul Dockery to help me out. Quite frankly I wasn't expecting much but was I ever - so very ever - wrong. He was invaluable in setting up (I'm height challenged compared to this fella!) and he was absolutely wonderful working with the parents and kids lining them up, getting them setup, getting their attention, giving me bunny ears to get a smile. Only a very few shots did I have to step in and arrange the kids. Hats off to a dedicated and motivated volunteer.

Paul and Bunny

I validated many items of theory and learned a few things during this trial - I won't go into the circumstances, I'll just mention them:

• Make a checklist of necessary items and only check them off when they're actually packed and ready to roll


• Pack backups of critical gear


• Check out the location prior. Take measurements and plan your layout ahead of time.


• Meter your lights


• Forget the tripod when shooting a variable number of kids. Shoot moving.


• Always - ALWAYS be aware of where the tether cable is when moving around. Nothing like dumping camera equipment worth $$$ on a hard floor. Lucky for me Canon builds their cameras like tanks.


• Do not use a backdrop with lines. When moving camera viewpoint it can appear tilted.


• Make sure the printer settings are saved as a default so they don't revert to some crappy plain paper setting (sorry folks)


• Don't forget items to gain the attention of small children. I forgot my Squeeky toy in spite of my checklist

Bunny and Twins

Bens Family