Noelle,
You’re teething a lot lately and you’ve been so uncomfortable! Thankfully we found Sophie the Giraffe — who is apparently God’s gift to teething babies. You love her, so we thought we’d do a Sophie-themed photo shoot!
At the mall today we picked up the awesome outfit and I set up the bedroom for the shot, which I wanted to be very light and airy. Then I just let you go at it and mom helped grab your attention while you played.
By the way, your favorite new thing is rolling over. The minute we put you on your back you roll over. After a few minutes you get bored so we reset you on your back and off you go again. And you’re grabbing everything around you too. We love it.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Two more days of work and then I get five days off with you and mom. Love you!
{ The Picture }
The bedroom wasn’t set up the way I wanted it — we actually had green sheets on the bed. So I grabbed a big white sheet and threw it over everything. I setup the shot to shoot sideways in the bed so there would be no headboard to clutter the shot. The walls are actually a bit darker than this and I wanted the shot to have much lighter tones so I lit the wall to make it brighter and change the tone.
It was night time so there was no ambient coming in the windows. All o f the light in the room is artificial. I used an AB800 in a Westcott 43 shoot through umbrella on the wall. The light also bounces all over with this setup and helps fill the room. The main light is an Einstein 640 in a Westcott 60 shoot through umbrella. It lights Noelle and throws extra light all over the room at the same time.
The last light, which probably added very negligible amount of light to the right side of the scene (I didn’t really test the output) was a daylight balanced fluorescent inside the lamp on my side table. There was a tungsten light there and I didn’t want that light to throw an orange color cast on that side of the frame so I swapped it with a daylight bulb. I probably could have just turned it off altogether, but I figured it might help keep the brightness up a little on the right side as the background light was coming from the left. If I cared, I would have tested it but I was getting the look I wanted regardless so I just moved on.
I was shooting at f2.0 and the AB800 is a little too powerful even at its lowest power setting for this aperture. I had to tone down the exposure on the left side of the wall in Lightroom to make it a little more even and smooth out some banding I was seeing. All in all, this is almost exactly the set I had in mind…love when that happens!