This dapper young man is named Ronan. Not, as I learned after the session, the stabbier version of the name, Ronin. Don’t get me wrong, Ronan is a cute name, and obviously very fitting for this little guy. However, there’s no denying that Ronin would be a pretty cool name for a boy! Give him a middle name of Danger and you’ve got a name that couldn’t fail! Right now my wife’s probably thinking that it’s a good thing she didn’t trust me to name our daughter. I probably would have named her Beatrix Kiddo.
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On Easter morning we had a community Egg hunt for the kids. It originally started out as a small deal, but quickly grew from two to five kids (plus related adults). I don’t know for sure, but I estimate that there were four dozen actual eggs and two dozen plastic eggs containing candy.
Apparently you’re supposed to hard boil the eggs. So in hindsight, the following story is no less than we deserve. This is somewhat awkward to admit to but you can probably imagine how horrified we all were when…I’m kidding, of course they were hard boiled. Seriously though, could you imagine five kids ranging from 1 to 7 years old with 48 raw eggs?! Us old people would have been out-numbered and out-gunned for sure!
Back in reality, we hid eggs around the yard between 8 and 9am . Around 9:30am the kids grabbed their baskets and went crazy! In between chatting with other parents, I walked around the yard with my camera and “light-on-a-stick” (see below) taking pictures. The kids ran around grabbing eggs and eating too much candy, it was awesome and I got some nice pictures too!
Image Details: I shot with a Nikon D200 and an SB-900 strobe sync’d via an SC-29 ttl cable. The ttl cable has a standard threaded hole on the bottom so it can be easily attached to things. In my case, I attached it to a monopod. The camera was set to aperture priority and down 1.7 stops. The SB-900 was set to ttl, no exposure compensation. The flash had a 1/4 cto gel on it to warm things up and lastly I used the Westcott Micro Apollo. So I held the camera in my right hand and the monopod in my left hand. I just point the light where I want it and snap away! It’s a little cumbersome but not too bad. My arm is a little sore even as I type. I’m happy with the results but I still find ttl to be a little less than perfect. Sometimes it seems to err on the side of overpowering. It’s certainly possible that I’m doing something wrong, so I’ll keep playing with it. So far TTL is not something I’d use for a paying gig. Here’s a picture my wife took of me with my “rig”.
One of my recent victim’s was my neighbor’s daughter, Annika. We met in the front yard as the sun was going down and got a few nice pics using only the available light. As it got darker I pulled out a flash. All the flash shots were done with an umbrella to diffuse the light. As the sun went down, I went for a more dramatic lighting effect, darker background and lit Annika fairly strongly (an example is below).
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With the flash (fairly low and close to Annika, probably at 1/4 power)
Same as previous picture
Dramatic light, fast shutter speed so that the background is dark, the flash was moved up and away, and changed to 1/2 power.
