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Chidren Photo Shoot - Vera

The main focus of this shoot was a family shoot. After reaching their house, Vera and her younger sister gathered around me to ask questions when I was setting up my softbox. It was just minutes before I was overwhelmed by Vera's warmness, treating me like as if we were old friends although it was our first meet-up. She even kindly invited me to stay over because they had air-conditioners inside their rooms - I was a little lost. Nevertheless, it was a good start when the kids liked me before the actual shoot. Vera was energetic, which was a value-add. Her love for phototaking gave me another morale boost. She started to display her activeness once we went down to the playground and she was constantly drawing my attention while trying to pose like a model.

I brought along my lighting equipment despite anticipating that I could not utilize them. The purpose was to produce the best photographs possible given any situation. The request was to do a shoot at two venues - the house and the neighbourhood. Since the first location was an indoor place, I set up my 600-watt strobe with a softbox in the living room in order to keep the ISO as low as possible while producing soft light. There was an impromptu shoot inside the children's bedroom and I quickly replaced the radio trigger with a speedlite that was more portable (compared to the strobe with softbox). The main highlight was the outdoor shoot and I opted for natural light after a quick analysis of the situation - the two kids were too hyperactive to keep still.

It was a fun yet tiring shoot. The kids started running about upon arriving at the first playground. It was extremely difficult to get both of them to take a family photograph together. Vera was extremely fond of posing in front of the camera while her sister had a shorter attention span.

The sun was hitting at us directly. Although it was in the late afternoon and the sunlight wasn't very harsh, the backlighting would cause too much contrast in exposure without any artificial light or reflector. Whereas the main structure of the playground was a web for children to climb and thus was too challenging to get the three of them to be photographed together. I quickly suggested to move to another location due to both the lighting and the infrastructure.

I was led to another playground nearby. It caught me by surprise because I didn't get to see it while doing my research online. I was looking at another one that would be totally protected from the direct sun. Anyway, it was good to shoot at places that they were comfortable at. The location, situated in between two blocks of flats, was good enough to give me the soft light that I was looking for.

I allowed the kids to run about in order to drain off some of their energy - in fact, the excited kids were unstopped and it was almost impossible to get them together to take family photographs. After I took out my props, I managed to grab their attention and the radius of their movements reduced tremendously. I started with a small bottle of bubble soap that they had to blow to create the bubbles. Next, I took out a bubble stick, followed by a second one so that both of them would not have to fight over the toys. I was glad that the bubbles managed to draw their interest very well.

It was both physically and mentally exhausting as I had tried too hard to capture as many moments as possible, going high and low, and moving around to get different angles. By the time we went back to their home, I was totally wrecked. Nevertheless, I was a happy photographer that day.

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