My sister-in-law held a Tastefully Simple party tonight. For those who aren't familiar, it's a line of spreads and dips that has run over into many other products like breads, sauces, soups...etc. My mom suggested that if my brother and kids were going to be staying at the house during the party, that Margaret should bring Ian so that the kids could play. I knew Margaret would be taking Eli too, so I thought this might be a good night to veg out at home. Somewhere in the midst of planning to send them off to this party, I decided to go along. I've been itching for someone to shoot, and my niece Emily is always up for a session.
I brought along a 32" umbrella and a lightstand. Instead of firing the light by cord, I used another flash to trigger an optical slave on the off camera flash. This also gave the benefit of a little fill light from above. I kind of like the effect and will probably use this when a white ceiling is available. Keeps people from tripping on cords as well.
I've been using the 85 f/1.8 lately for a lot of my portraits and have been very happy with the results. Well, for one reason or another, I ended up with a big batch of blurry photos. I shot them at a pretty shallow depth of field, but I did have a couple come out quite sharp and in perfect focus, so I'm not sure what the issue was tonight. Probably dumb luck. I really wasn't happy with this pose, but it was the best of the two shots that I deemed acceptable. It could have been the combination of the ambient light being hard to focus by and the shallow depth of field, but it irks the crap out of me. I love to shoot shallow like this for headshots, but if I'm going to have to shoot at f/5.6 or above to get things in focus, then why have a f/1.8 lens? For big groups it's no big deal, I'll shoot at f/8-f/11 anyways.
I decided to post this shot and the story as proof that, well to put it bluntly, shit happens. You can't always be at the top of your game. Sometimes things just go badly, no matter how well the plans are laid out. I'm not throwing all my gear in the trash because of it, but I will be testing the crap out of that body/lens combo before I take it on a paying shoot again. So, this is it. One of two good shots, out of 42. Ouch. That really stings when I put it like that.
Fortunately my niece loves to pose and I will be able to reshoot the session. What happened tonight is the biggest reason I stopped shooting weddings. No do-overs there.
As I look at this shot, I see so much of my mother in Emily. It's like I've got a time machine and got to go back to photograph my mother when she was 9. Wouldn't that be sweet?
