Eid - Our Family Portraits
Date – September 2015
Location – Our ‘yard’
Welcome to my second personal blog post, I hope you have all read my first personal blog as it will give you a better understanding about me and why I have decided to blog about my photos and experiences.
Okay, so these photos are from Eid (24th September 2015). Firstly I’d like to have a little rant about females on Eid and how long they take to get ready – they spend half of the day just getting ready!! Eid is an Islamic celebration that occurs twice a year; it is a time to be more charitable than usual and appreciate spending time with loved ones. Part of the celebration (a major part for the women – ok and some men too I guess) is wearing new or special clothes, which is why we decided to make the most of it and do some family portraits, something we may continue to do in future!
Moving on to the shoot, our first dilemma was the weather. It was mostly sunny and clear or within minutes it began to rain whilst the whole day was windy and cold too. We had initially made plans to place the shoot at Crammond Park, however taking the weather into account we had to quickly think of a suitable alternative.
In the end, I decided to head home and set up the shoot next to our flat. This saved us from having to carry our equipment around against the weather. We decided to use the drive through tunnel that gives access to our rear parking whilst discreetly holding our blocks’ wheelie bins. Looking at the photos, you’d have never guessed!
Now for the setup I wanted to do something different from last time round and decided to introduce colours into the image, I was unsure of how this would pay off but I think it worked a charm and really made the images pop. I used this idea for the light set up at Emon’s Mehendi.
Equipment used:
- Pocket Wizard to trigger the flash
- Three Canon speedlite 600ex-rt
- Lastolite Octabox
- Manfrotto light stands
- Canon 5dmkiii
- Canon 70-200 2.8 mkii
- Gitzo tripod
- Gorilla pod
- Gary fong snoot
- Gary fong light sphere
First I set up the two lights. I decided to use the large Lastolight Octabox as my main light since I knew this was going to provide very soft light for the close up portraits and also large enough to light up everyone evenly for the group shots. The second flash (using a Gary fong snoot), was directly opposite the first light and tilted down towards the subject to give them some hair light.
Finally on the third flash (to add the colour) I went for the Gary fong light sphere modifier – it’s brilliant at spreading light evenly everywhere. As everyone was wearing bright and colourful clothing, I wanted to use the red since it is a bold colour. I moved this flash around to see how it affects the pictures.
Hope this post inspires a few ideas for incorporating colour to your next images.
