A few weeks ago I was invited to shoot the birthday party of my goddaughter, Cristina. She was turning four and having a dress up tea party. The girls were all dressed in brightly colored dresses and Cristina’s Mom, Valentina, supplied them with wings to complete the costumes.
birthday
Happy Birthday Mom! Since she’s out of town I have no choice but to embarrass her publicly with a birthday post and picture.
I took this picture on Mother’s Day in 2008. Goodness, I’ve learned a lot about lighting since then. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent picture. But there’s some things going on in here that I wouldn’t do anymore. For one, her dark hair in front of the dark tree. BAD BAD BAD! I should have used a light to add separation or used a different background. Anyway, Happy Birthday!
Happy Third Birthday Phoebe!
I once read that to take more interesting pictures you need to become a more interesting person. There’s no question about it, Phubu, you make things more interesting!
On Super Bowl Sunday I celebrated by not watching the game and going to Tony’s (Marie’s Cousin’s son) 18th birthday party instead.
We had a lot of fun, it’s been a few months since that side of the family had a big get-together.
After a long and tiresome negotiation I was even able to convince Tony’s Mom into letting me do a quick photo session with him. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hey Lupita would you mind if…
Lupita: Yeah! TONY GET OVER HERE NOW AND LET JON TAKE YOUR PICTURE! Puhlease? (followed by that deviant smile that only Lupita can do)
Tony’s a good kid and went along with it, I dare say he enjoyed it. Or he’s just a good actor.
Image Details: I TOTALLY stole this technique from David Hobby at Strobist. And I mean I stole the ENTIRE thing beginning with the lighting and even the pose and composition, everything! And I’m not even a little ashamed 
Maybe someday I’ll have something worth copying too.
I had Lupita act as my VAL (Voice Activated Lightstand) standing to the left of the camera holding the SB-900 which was fitted with a 1/4 CTO gel and a Westcott Micro Apollo. I set the on-camera flash TTL down by a full stop and the SB-900 was set to TTL with no compensation.
The SB-900 creates the nice highlights on the left side of Tony’s face. The on-camera flash acts as on-axis fill, filling in the shadows on his face a bit. If you look in his ear (which I’m sure that’s exactly what Tony wants you to do) you’ll see some specular highlighting. That’s from the on-camera flash. It would be impossible for the SB-900 light to wrap around his head and into his ear.
I don’t remember how many stops down the background was, at least two considering how dark it is.
Thanks again to Lupita for your superb VAL skills and to Tony for letting me use your face, Happy Birthday!
