I gave myself 15 minutes to take separate portraits of Isabelle and Ben. This included the setting up of any lights, the shoot itself and post processing.
Not a lot of time.
Working under a time crunch with kids is challenging. Ben will only give you a few minutes to work with and that’s it. Nothing more. I usually find I have to break it up into shorter sessions and work around his ever changing moods. Most frames I captured tonight were of him crying. Isabelle is older and is easier to work but at the same time she can get fussy just as quick.
It’s important give yourself personal photography challenges. I imagine this is probably true for every form of art. For photography, it might be doing something simple like shooting with only one prime lens for a week. Maybe it’s just shooting at a time of day that you would normally avoid. Whatever it is, forcing yourself to work within a set of rules, especially difficult ones, is just plain healthy.
These are by no means the best portraits I have ever made, but I know that future ones will be better because of it. At the beginning of the year there was no way I could have banged off a couple of photos in this amount of time – well, not properly exposed and in focus ones. It is something to be proud of.
Strobist: Alien Bees 800 with 50 inch Westcott softbox camera right, bookend camera right for fill, triggered by Cybersync.
3 comments