Timing is Everything!

Once in a while the sun, moon, and stars all line up for you. This past Christmas was one of those times. The fact that all three of our children, one husband and our first grandson was going to be in for Christmas... Well, what can I say, their Mom and I were very happy. So there was the sun.

Now for the moon. I had a few items for a studio I have been setting up downstairs and have been flip flopping back and forth between what lighting I was going to go with. Alien Bees, Profoto (that was the spectrum) or something in between. The Bees were ok, I have an 800 Ws unit that I have to adjust every time I change something. This is common for studio lights and as I understand one of the purposes for an assistant. I think technology has moved fare enough that we can do better. I found that in the Swiss. It was two days before Christmas when the large B&H package came to the door with the Elinchrom lighting kit. I covered the set-up in a previous post. click [here]. So the Sun an Moon were now in place.

The stars almost slipped by as on Christmas day we all went downstairs to get the family portrait done. We shot, and shot. Probably 70-80 images in all, we gat about all permutations of people shot. Tim our oldest and least willing to have his picture taken was in a hurry to go visit a friend and had taken off when he felt it was over. We were finishing up when Sandy said that we have not taken a picture with just the three of them. Oh well, guess that one was a loss... Or was it? All of a sudden we heard the tromping of Tim' feet down the stairs... He had forgotten something. We had not broken down the set-up yet and we called him over for the picture. Yes the image above is the only picture we took. All the stars were in their proper place that day.

This image will be sent off to be printed on a 24x30 canvas and I will have to let you know how that turns out. The camera specs are this; shot with a Canon 5D Mk II with a Ef 24-70 f/2.8L USM lens at 1/40th f/14 at an ISO of 200. A red gelled speedlight triggered with a PocketWizard lit the background . The two Elinchrom 600RX monolights were triggered with the Skyport system.

It was a fun day to work with the family and we got some really great shots from the experience.

That will do it for today! Cya... Doug

For more information on our photography, visit us at peekfoto.