For the fourth installment of my Homeless to Home project, about families who have sought help from the Family Promise program and who now have their own home, I photographed Crystal and her two children. After losing her home, Crystal immediately called Family Promise on the recommendation of someone who told her about the organization. Thankfully, they happened to have exactly three spots open - perfect for her and the kids. At first she was scared about the limit of a 3-month stay. She wondered how she was going to make a turn-around in 3 months: find a job, become financially independent, and find a place for her and her kids to live. However, at the very end of her three months, someone called Family Promise and wanted to donate a trailer. Gloria, the Executive Director at Family Promise, knew she had the perfect family for the trailer. She wanted Crystal to go check it out first because the person donating it mentioned that it was in very bad shape. Luckily, someone offered to fix it up by replacing the flooring. Crystal and her kids moved into the fixed-up trailer but then the 2010 hail storm caused extensive damage. Just two months ago, Crystal and the kids were able to move out of the two bedroom trailer into their current three bedroom apartment.
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel | | | | |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
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| ©2011, Leslie McDaniel |
So, which of the family portraits do you like best? I threw in the silly one because the kids wanted to do "funny" pictures and I think it shows that they have a lot of fun together. However, I'm more likely to use the first or third photographs as the one whole-family portrait.
For the kids, I kept trying each of these in black and white for some reason, but then settled on the color versions. Of the three choices for Shanna, which do you prefer? And finally, which portrait of Zeke do you prefer?
Last week I had the opportunity to photography people who attend Journey Church as part of a project to celebrate our five years here in Bozeman, MT. The goal was to make close-up portraits of people (read: anyone who would show up at the designated time) against a white backdrop. The portraits of the models, who were asked to make funny, happy, or silly faces, were to be slightly overexposed.
Since the portraits were only going to be from the neck up, I didn't have to worry about having a full-length seamless white backdrop. I didn't have access to a white wall at The Commons where I photographed, and I don't have any type of solid white sheet or other white backdrop material. Instead, I taped together three or four sections from a roll of white craft paper. The roll of craft paper was probably about 1.5' wide and each section I cut was several feet long. The result was a white backdrop that was about 5' wide and long enough to cover a wide range of heights. Now...on to the lighting...
I don't have a studio, so all of my lighting must be ready for "on location." For this reason, I choose to travel light. My main light was an Alien Bee 800 located in front of the model and raised up about 8-10'. Since somewhat harsh lighting was called for in the style of portraits we wanted to create, I simply used the small reflector that comes with the Alien Bee rather than a softbox or some other modifier. The light was angled down over the model's head.
Since I used overlapping sheets of paper and the background needed to be very bright, I brought along two flash heads to aim at the white backdrop. I didn't use modifiers on the two flash heads and I pointed them directly at the background. The flash heads and Alien Bee strober were triggered by the Pocket Wizard attached to my camera. You can see my lighting set up in this diagram:
I stood under and just barely to the left side of the Alien Bee's light stand (although this was difficult to show in the diagram). I brought along a step stool for me to stand on to photograph tall people and for the younger kids to stand on. Overall, I think the job was a success!
The technical:
* Canon 5D with 85mm f/1.8 lens
* Camera settings f/11 @ 1/125
* Alien Bee 800 setting: lowest power
* Flash Settings: both at 1/16 power
I hope this has been helpful. I plan to do more "how-to's" in the future. If you're a photographer, or even just a parent taking photographs of your kids, how have you had to improvise with a background or lighting to create a portrait you have in your mind?
