Best Christmas Present Ever.

This weekend we spent some time with our friends, the Hoxmeiers, and photographed their new family for Chirstmas cards and a newborn session with little Allison. It was a great shoot and Allison was not only fuss-free, she seemed to love the camera. We were also shocked to see Rose...you'd never know she just gave birth a few weeks ago! Nick's alright too.

When we arrived and assessed the light sitation things were looking pretty dim, literally. Even with our ISO cranked up to 800 and our aperature open to 1.4 on the 50mm we could only get a speed of 30. Which is unfortunately not fast enough to take a crisp photo. We thought it might be better if we raised the venetian blinds, but (as our fellow Minnesotans know) windows are usually covered by plastic this time of year and accessing blinds is out of the question. So our only remaining natural-light option was to go outside...in the rather brisk winter air (about 0 Farenheit)...yeah right, no thank you.

It was "flash time," and usually we would have brought our studio lamps to the shoot for just this situation, but I've been on a "traveling light" kick lately and so all we brought was our speedlite. Lucky for us their apartment has a nice white ceiling and walls, perfect for bouncing light. Our tactic was simple, bounce the light so we got even fill from above and, where possible, an indirect 45' accent light. For a background we used another favorite tactic...the supremely light-absorbent black velvet cloth. It provides great high-contrast neutral backbround for just about any subject and allows you to really focus on the shadows ON the subject and less on the shadows cast BY the subject. However the downside of velvet is that it really shows things like dust, lint, hair, or baby spittle.

It was a fun shoot with good friends and some interesting technical challenges that I beleive came together to great effect. Congratulations Nick and Rose! and Welcome to the world Allison, you're the best Christmas present your parents could have asked for!