Last night I had the best family over for a family portrait. I had just switched over to a white background and needed a few test shots. Both mom and dad jumped in front of the camera happy to ham it up. Classic!

I turned our living room into a portable indoor studio. I used the curtain rod to hang up my backgrounds – a white and a black duvet cover, 2 SB-800’s, one Lastolite softbox, a ladder and lots of energy. Plus, David took the kids to my parents house for dinner and a sleep-over. Saaaaaweeeet!

But, things weren’t always this sweet this week as i couldn’t find my white sheet. I literally tore our house apart several times. Finally, I found it this afternoon…wrinkles and all. Since I don’t own an iron (well I think we do have one but I don’t even know where it is) I used my hair dryer to smooth out some of the wrinkles. And it worked…slowly, until the hair dryer kept overheating because I had it too close to the material and I wasn’t letting enough air flow circulate through.

I can honestly say this family made my job super easy. They came up with the best and most creative poses. I hardly had to tell them what to do. So I just kept an eye on my equipement and kept shooting. My only drawback of the night were my batteries. I was shooting with 2 SB-800’s, one in a softbox and the other with a small diffuser on the front. The rechargeable double A’s were taking super long to charge up by the end of the photoshoot I missed a couple of good opportunities. Time to buy some new batteries tomorrow before my shoot on Sunday. One day I’ll own a real battery pack and strobes for indoor sessions. For the moment though the SB-800’s were great. What I love about them is their portability and flexibility – I just wish I had another way of powering them up.

Mid-way through the shoot I changed backdrops and went to classic black…just to change things up. I also changed up my lighting. I had originally started with a clam shell approach and then moved one of the SB-800’s behind my subject for some cool rim lighting. I re-angled the soft box and the creativity began once more.

I am very pleased at the pictures I took tonight. This was my first ‘real’ session with people other than my family members. I should post the pictures I took of David during the week. He was so impressed with me asking for his help…again. He’s such a trooper. What would I do without him??

So here’s David. I asked him to hold something in his hand and pretend it was his wife (that would be me) so I could work on getting the strobes in the correct spot and also nail down camera and flash settings. You can see David was very impressed with this entire session. And, when he wasn’t there to help me I had to resort to Mr. Potato Head to help me out. But that’s another story and another picture.

So I’m open for business and can offer a great price on a family portrait shoot as I have no rent to pay. I’m an informal type of person and I like to laugh and have people laugh during the shoot. I’m not into the stuffy poses – fingers this way, head that way, eyes over here etc. If this is what you are looking for than please contact me. Thanks for the super family who made my evening fun to shoot and who has now given me the confidence to approach other families. You guys were awesome!!