Quick Family Portrait in a 8x12 space

Click on image to see it larger.


So a friend of mine asks me to take a shot of him and his two kids as a surprise for Mom...whose birthday is the next day. I didn't have a lot of time so I told him that I would meet him in his gym at 3pm (he is a phys. ed. teacher). Now the gym is huge but due to the size of my background fabric (6'x8') I couldn't use much of it.
There aren't any decent backgrounds in there and I wanted a clean and simple image for him to present. The small background that I used is really designed for individual portraits but that was what I had in my car. A little photoshop fixed the problem after (see the post processing section later).
I set an Einstein 640 into a 63" umbrella on axis with the camera for the main light. I then added another Einstein 640 into a softbox to camera left and 1 stop higher than the main for a key light.
I put two speedlights on stands to camera left and right aimed at the background to blow out the background (I didn't have enough power in them but again...easy fix in PS. One speedlight had a barndoor on it and the other a simple flag to avoid spill onto the subjects. The background material was so small that I didn't have much room to work with. If I had a larger BG, then I could simply have created more space from the subject to the background and not had to worry about spill.
Everything was triggered with skyports. The lens was a 50 1.4 and the camera a 1D mark IV.
another image here (Click to see larger)

Post Processing:
First I had to clone in some background on the edges as it was a bit too narrow for the frame. Simple to do: create another layer, select the clone stamp, alt click an adjacent section of background, then click and drag the stamp along the border..takes about 5 seconds.
Second, the background was a dull gray rather than white. Again,very simple solution. Create another layer, in the blending drop down menu, select screen. The result was close enough to white on the background to suit me. Then I add a mask to the layer, select a black brush and go over the subjects quickly to bring them back to proper exposure...takes about 30 seconds once you know how.

set up shot

To the left you can see the umbrella that was the main light that metered at F5.6 and the softbox next to it which metered at F8 (I later upped that to F9 for more DOF). To the right you can see the two speedlights on stands used to blow out the background.
The clients were standing just to the background side of the white line on the floor. As you can see, not a lot of room. And finally the small backdrop that I rarely use...but when I do use it..I love it.


Cheers,