Attempts at Christmas Portraiture

Taking indoor, portrait-style photographs of people is a complex task even for photographers that own thousands of dollars worth of artificial lighting. Taking indoor, portrait-style photographs of people without that kind of lighting is even more difficult, because you have so much less flexibility in manipulating the light that is landing on your subject. Here's my attempt at Christmas portraits of the kids...

Kylie did pretty well for her pictures. We turned all the lights off in our living room and then took a floor-type torch lamp and aimed it at her like a canon for the main light. I used the external flash on my camera for fill light to avoid any harsh shadows on her face. Unfortunately there is little to no lighting on the background (the Christmas tree), and Photoshop only got me so far in recovering some of that detail. I was pretty pleased with these pictures, considering my tools. It must have looked pretty funny to see how we were tearing apart the living room to take these pictures.

The same night I attempted portraits of Lukas and Eli, but they weren't dressed in Christmas outfits (Kylie was the target subject and we took pictures of Lukas and Eli just to take them). The shots of Lukas and Eli really struggled in one aspect, and I couldn't figure it out...and then I realized their heads were blending into the background too much. A fancy photographer with fancy photography lighting might have a small lamp that shoots down onto the subject's head to give it some light and keep it from blending into the background, especially if the background is dark. Usually we don't realize this because in our homes the light is always 'from the ceiling,' but when taking portraits you want the majority of the light coming from 'the side' so it is shining on the face, not the head. By making light come from the side you avoid giving your subject harsh shadows, especially around their nose and their eyes. Imagine if the light were water, and if you dumped it on the subject's head from up above, some spots of the face (under the eyes and nose) would not get wet. If you shoot the 'water' or the light from the side like from a water gun, all the spots of the face get lit. But then the problem presents itself if ALL your light is coming from the front-nothing is setting off the hair, and the subject blends in. After the first night of Kylie portrait-shooting, we put the boys in Christmas clothes and I made an adjustment to my poor-man's photography studio. My improvised solution here was to unscrew 3 of the 4 light bulbs in the ceiling fan light just above Lukas' head. That gave enough light from 'up top' to keep him from blending in too badly to the Christmas tree behind him, and a bit of dodge and burn work in Photoshop also helped.

The problem here is similar with Eli, the arm on the left is really blending into the background. There's also some big shadow space on the left side of his face, but its manageable. As before, the background Christmas tree is pretty dark.

Oh well! I had fun making my makeshift photography studio even if the results are less than perfect. Merry Christmas!