Flash Your Christmas Tree

Today the wife and I gathered our three children to take our annual Christmas portrait in front of our Christmas tree. The room lighting was not very good so I setup two off camera slave flashes (580 EX II and 430 EX) on light stands and triggered them using the Canon 7D's built-in master flash. I love this feature on the 7D!

I wanted to capture the available light of the Christmas tree but after a few test shots with the children I knew I would have to go with a faster shutter speed to minimized motion blur because our youngest would not or could not stand still. This resulted in a 1/60 second shutter speed with an aperture of 4.5. to get a shallow depth of field. I setup the camera to manual mode (M) and took a few test shots to dial in the flash to get a decent exposure.

We took several images with all five us but I was not very happy with any of them because the lights on the Christmas tree just didn't show up at all. The children were becoming restless so I made the decision that what we had taken was going to have to do.

After the boys were off in their rooms playing my wife and I continued the photo session with a few images of both of us. Me being somewhat lazy on that Sunday afternoon I left the camera on the same settings as before and again I wasn't happy with the results.

What to do? I decided to slow the shutter shutter speed by a stop or two while leaving the aperture at 4.5 and I also lowered the flash output by 1 stop. Wow, what a difference it made. Now this is what I had in mind when we started.

Next year our youngest will be a little bit older and hopefully a little more able or willing to stand still so I can use the slower shutter speed and get those Christmas tree lights to really glow in our family Christmas portrait.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

A Rainy Saturday

This has been a very dry summer in Texas but this past week has been very wet and today (Saturday) it rained almost all day long. Our three boys were content to stay in their rooms and play video games most of the day and there wasn't much on TV so I decided to experiment with portrait lighting and try out an idea I had for a portrait of my wife. As usual, she was more than happy to be my photography muse for the day.

The portrait idea I had was to use the french doors that lead from our living room out to the back patio as a prop for a portrait. I wanted to create a evening or night feel with my wife in a cocktail dress and use the window panes of the french door to break up the image. Even with the rainy overcast sky there was no way I could shoot from the darker inside of the house, through the french doors to the bright outside without turning my wife into a silhouette. The solution was to hang a 6'x6' peice of black felt cloth from the roof of the patio as a back drop and block the harsh outside light, the patio furniture and the boys go-kart, bikes and toys on the patio. I then placed a lightstand outside to the left of the door with a speedlite and reflective umbrella to illuminate her.

I like the results...

This one was taken in the same place but with the french doors open.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography

Using Natural and Artificial Light

With all the flowering plants sprouting up outside I decided to do some close-up macro photography using the flowers as my subject. I went outside setup my tripod, attached the camera and mounted my Tamron 17-70mm MACRO lens to the camera.

I then set the aperture to f/25, manually focused on the flower and looked through the view finder to see the flower wiggling back and fourth as it was buffeted by the winds. I popped off a few shots and quickly determined that this wasn't going to work because I couldn't keep the ISO at 100 and get the shutter speed high enough to compensate for the movement caused by the wind. So what to do next? I went in the house to get a pair of scissors and vase. I was going to cut the flower and bring it inside and photograph it there. But what do I see sitting on the kitchen table? A new flowering plant that my wife had just purchased and the flowers where orange, my favorite color. I had a new subject to photograph.

I typically shoot using natural light but I was in an experimental mood so I retrieved my tripod and camera from outside and set it up in the kitchen. I placed the flower pot near a window to provide some back lighting using the soft natural sunlight flowing in from the northern facing windows. Because I was using the natural light as a back light I had to use artificial light to illuminate the front of the flowers to prevent a silhouette effect. I could have used the camera's built-in flash but that would have most likely washed out the color and flattened the image. I set up my portable light stand and umbrella and mounted my Canon 480 EX flash in slave mode and placed it at a 45 degree angle just to the left and above the flowers and bounced the light using the umbrella. I mounted my Canon 580 EX II flash on the camera's hot shoe and pointed it straight up to bound the light off the ceiling and provide fill light. I overexposed by about 1-1/3 stop to blow out the background.

I like the results, what about you?

f/22, ISO100, 4.0 sec, 70mm

This is the same image as above post processing in Lightroom 2.0 to convert it to black and white and overexposed to give it a high key look.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.