Family Portraits - My Own Take

This year I decided to take the creative, no...frugal, no...easy, no...innovative way out of the crampness that is mall madness around the holidays. I can't count how many times my dad has told me and my sister how whenever he takes out the camera we leap for cover, usually nabbing nearby pillows or chairs, sometimes utilizing projectiles to make a safe escape. There really aren't any pictures of the whole family. That's why this year I set-out to get a good group picture of the four of us, and then an individual headshot. I picked up a nice 16x20 sized picture frame and then four borderless clip 8x10 picture holders that will flank it. Originall I wanted to do a horizontal (landscape) picture, but there really wasn't much room to fit it in, so I'm going with a portrait (vertical) orientation with the other pictures also vertical around it. While the chocolates and gift cards will be respectively digested and left to gain dust in a closet, I wanted to really leave something on the wall to commemorate how far we've really come as a family. It may become hard to digest how much we've come or will change down the road, and it may gain dust, but how unique is chocolate or itchy sweaters?

I knew that doing a portrait of a group like this will require sharpness throughout the frame, as well as a proper filling of the frame. A 16x20 print isn't that big of a problem, but rather safe than sorry. Or maybe I'm just trying to find an excuse to rent the most expensive zoom lens currently availalbe for D-SLRs, and unarguably my favorite lens for the Sony/Minolta A mount. It's the Sony Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8 SSM lens; essentially the only lens one could really need in that range. The weight of the lens is insane, making my body feel like a cheap accessory. Even with the vertical grip, I felt more comfortable holding it by the lens than the body to take some strain off of the lens mount. It felt incredibly nice in the hand, but I just didn't like the zoom and focus ring grip. It had really shallow perforations. The king in grips is tamron with their deep texturized rings. But that's beside the point anyways. The sharpness of the lens is immediately apparent, but what really strikes the end-product is the bokeh (the blurriness attributed to areas not in focus of the photo). It has a circular aperture, meaning that you don't get hexagonal-shaped bokeh like most stanard 6-7 blades. The SSM (similar to HSM or USM on Nikon and Canon) leads to fast and virtually silent focusing. A nice touch. Most new year's resolutions involve some kind of diet to loose weight. My diet will consist entirely of ramen freeze-dried noodles until I can afford this lens.

Enough of that. More of pictures and videos. If you take a look below, I've posted another video of the set-up and a dicussion of setting up the shots. Some of the pictures look blurry in the video, I'm not sure why something along the lines of the rendering process or file format.

You can check out some of my favorite shots below (some look a little on the blue/cold side when uploaded, but they look fine to me outside of blogger).

It was pretty fun doing the shoot, although it was challenging getting the lighting right. Next time I'll definately be renting lights for groups larger than 1 or 2. Here's my thoughts on that (only photo and lighting keeps apply):

Speedlight madness have taken the amateur photography world by storm. The capability of these strobes has really opened up the ability for amateur and aspiring photographers to take some great portraits. The hundreds of [Location] Strobist Group, including the Toronto Strobist Group that I'm a part of (http://www.flickr.com/groups/487531@N21/) as well as the main strobist flickr pool (http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/) show that people aren't afraid to buy an umbrealla and take pictures of their friends, or even do a collaborative model shoot. The strobes themselves are mightly portable. My entire location kit as of right now consists of 1 hockey bag. That's lights, cameras, lenses, everything and anything I could possibly need. That's 4 lights too. But shooting yesterday I really came to a physical roadblock, something I had been contemplating for a long time: a lack of power.

I currently have an arsenal of 6 strobes. 5 off-camera, and 1 on-camera. My off-camera lights consist of the entire SB-2x series praised: an SB-24, SB-25, SB-26 and SB-28 as well an a Vivitar 285 HV. The only reason that I keep the vivtar is because I have the neatest gel kit for it that I nabbed for 5$. It also makes me feel nostalgic. It's mainly used for coloured gels in combination with a seperate optical slave. I currently use 2 receivers for my triggering system, and can use up to 4 strobes total. 2 radio triggered and 2 optically (1x SB-26, 1x accessory). That gives me a good amount of light for portraits. The issue here is with large groups and recycle times with power. I wasn't even able to take a group portrait without 3 slaves, with most on full power, sucking the little life out my rechargeables. I've made a decision that over the next year I'll be adding some larger strobes to my aresenal just to give me the flexibility I need on shoots. I don't think I'll ever completely part with speedlights. For a great headshot, 2 strobes will do. 1 umbrella'ed and 1 snooted hairlight. But for large groups, or for times when I can't wait 10 seconds in between a full power flash, I'll need to rely on larger strobes more and more. Any thoughts on this?

I don't think I'm too far off the mark with this. I love doing couple shots and individual headshots, but my true desire is to do more commercial and corporate photography, where power and time are of the essence. There are still a few professionals out there that do use their small speedlights (David Hobby, Joe McNally, etc.), but the big players still rely on their large strobes. Even the great DVD set by Zack Arias in most of his shots uses the Sunpak 120J strobe that is essentially a speedlight with a full-sized strobe tube and a capacitor liekly the size of your fist. He also relies heavily on his alienbees gear in combination. Just some food for thought here.

I wish everyone the best for the new year, and I can't wait to get my feet wet in some new ideas I have cooking up.

Cheers everyone.