Gone in 30 minutes - Quick speed light portraits

So I had the niece and nephew over last night and thought to myself "Hey maybe I should round up the kids and make some portraits".  So I grabbed my gear and began setting things up.  Softbox "check", Speedlight "check", 70-200 "check", location "DAMN". My condo is not very big at all and not laid out very photographer friendly, so I had to be a bit creative. I found a small corner in the back master bathroom area just in front of a door that leads to the balcony.  I quickly setup the light and snapped a few picks. The lighting was kinda working but the background was not.  I could see the door handle and also some robes we had hanging on the door.  Okay so now what? Do I take everything down? (pain in the A**), or do I get even more creative?  More creative of course, sometimes laziness forces us to be more creative. So I scrounged through the linen closet for something to hang up to cover the door and everything hanging on the door. Just my luck I came across an old shower curtain.  It had some pretty neutral colors but with the bokeh I felt it would look pretty nice. So I hung it up grabbed one of my test subjects and fired off a few shots. Bam!! I liked what I was seeing. Okay now comes the really tough part, how to get the kids to stop playing long enough to make some portraits. Bribe them of course..haha. I ended up with about 30 minutes of actual cooperation time. For the minimal set up and time it ended up being quite the nice session and some really nice pictures. Sometimes you have to make due with what time and space you are given and make the best of it.

Bases loaded - Portrait shoot with Mason

Just thought I would write up a quick post about my portrait session last week with 10 year old Mason at Petrovitsky Park in Renton. The theme for the shoot was Baseball as you can probably tell from the photos.  It was extremely hot early in the day, but as the sun got lower, it turned out to be a perfect day for shooting (which here means it didn't rain).  When Mason and his mother Trina showed up to the shoot, I could see that Mason was a bit nervous.  So I quickly introduced myself, cracked a few jokes and got him to smile after that he began to relax.  After about 10 minutes he started to really get into it and have fun. He was an absolute pleasure to work with and a great model. The photos came out great and now Mason has something he can be proud of and feel good about sharing and his mother can always look back on and smile.