Outdoor Children and Family Photography in Sylvan Lake Alberta

Hey Everyone how are ya?  Thats good.  Im great.  Thanks for asking ;)

Ok thats enough.  Im up late and just finished some editing of 4 little munchkins, one of them being a brand new baby.......
 As you can see in the photographs they were not all able to pose together for all of the photos but we did what we could with the age difference and the horrible mosquito outbreak outside.  The newest little one is Emma McLeod, who's mom did some maternity photos a few posts down.  Congrats to the McLeods!  What a cute baby.  The other girls, sis and cousins, were all full of energy and did their best to earn smarties if they held still and forced out smiles for the camera.  I'd have to say they did pretty good and gave me a few good laughs along the way.

Techy info:  when shooting I used two strobes high and about 45 degrees from the subjects. In the yard I used umbrellas to diffuse the light and make is softer.  On the tracks I only used one light and recruited a mom to hold the umbrella for me wherever I wanted it. hehe (sorry Kari).  I mostly shot in 100-200 ISO and used an aperture of no bigger than 3.5 in order to keep everyones face in focus but still get a blurry background.  Shutter speeds were usually 125th-250th of a second.  I was always adjusting to compensate for the decreasing ambient light, different sun direction, and strength of my strobe which usually ran about 1/4 power on manual settings.

Tip for other photographers that I have learned from mistakes in the past:  when shooting in the sun getting close to the horizon,  you have to watch where shadows lay on your subjects.  For instance through a fence or trees you get spots of light and shadow which can really look funny if not careful.  A little is OK but a lot...mmmm not so much.  Too much contrast and difficult to edit in post production.  You are better off preventing this by have peoples faces either in even sunlight or shade.  Make sense?

Kurt ;)