When Children Won't Model for Me |Off Camera Flash|Graham, Washington

Just a little behind the scenes look at what I practice and who I practice with during the dark and slow winter months.



Step 1 - Christmas Tree! 
Usually my Christmas tree pictures are details of ornaments, enjoying the huge aperture abilities of the 50mm and bringing in as much ambient light as possible.  Some years I focused on the unfocused beauty of Christmas lights.  This year, manipulating light through strobes!
Here is our tree.  Not a fantastic or fancy tree, just our usual family tree.  I placed my Nikon SB600 behind the tree, pointing up and slightly toward the tree with a 4" soft box attached for diffusing.


I like it!  I like that it gives definition to the outter tree branches.  Darn, I wish I had written down my settings. :(  I used iShoot RF Transmitter and Receiver to fire the Speedlight.

Step 2 - Fill Light!
I added my little rustic rocking chair, planning to bring in one of the kids to model, er, I mean, PLAY with me in a few minutes.  I set the Nikon SB900 to camera left and a foot or more above me, pointing directly at the chair with a large diffuser.  *Probably obvious but I changed the white balance setting in the camera at this point. 


Not bad, eh?  Now we just need a little cutness to round it out and make it more interesting than a tree & a chair....

Step 3 - The Child who refuses to sit in the chair.
Yup.  My 3 year old.  He felt it JUST wasn't good enough to sit in the cute chair, he had to bring in the bean bag to model HIS way....  My older two also got in on the action of NOT sitting in the chair but I'll spare them the embarassment... ha ha ha ha ha....



All camera and flash settings remain the same.  With the fill flash I no longer get the edges of the tree as pointily defined as with only the SB600, but I can now properly illuminate my precious kiddo! 

Just a little behind the scenes look at what I practice and who I practice with during the dark and slow winter months.