Faye

I paid my second visit in as many weekends to Galway on Friday night for the christening of my wife’s first cousin – Faye – in the village of Dunmore, near Tuam. This latest addition to Aoife’s extended family means a span of almost 31 years between the oldest and youngest first cousins, which may not be a record, but is certainly a bigger span than most families.  Faye performed particularly well on her big day, in that she slept through most of the christening and handled being handed from relative to relative for the rest of the day particularly well.  In the midst of all the eating that followed the christening back at her grandmother’s house, there was time for a quick formal photo shoot.

I was “on duty” as photographer for the day, but I’d have been taking photographs anyway, and still had plenty of opportunity to eat, drink and bounce on the bouncy castle as much as anyone else.  In truth, when it came to the latter, possibly more than everyone else.  At one point I found myself sharing the bouncy castle (actually more of a bouncy slide – way more fun, and better for photographs too) with 6 others.  As each reached the bottom of the slide I asked them their age.  When I added their ages together they reached a combined total of 28 years.  Actually 28 and a quarter to be precise.  I’m 32.  When there are 7 people on a bouncy castle, and you’re older than the rest of them put together, it’s time to get off the bouncy castle.

Anyway, I digress.

The “formal” photoshoot, such that it was, took place after Faye had been fed and winded once we all got back to her grandmother’s house.  She was still kitted out in her christening gown, which incidentally was also her mother’s, and all of her mother’s siblings.  There was meaning in the bedspread on which she lay also – it had been a wedding present for her grandmother 57 years ago.  So there’s a lot of history in the photograph you see at the top of this post.

The room we were in had practically zero light, but I had expected that, so had brought in just one light and light modifier – both of them together now affirmed as my single light source of choice.  The light was my Nikon SB-800 flash, and the light modifier my Lastolite Hotshoe Ezybox Softbox.  For the photograph above it is being held by my sister-in-law, and Faye’s new fairy godmother, above and slightly to camera right.  Just to my left Faye’s dad was keeping her eyes in the general direction of the camera, and for this photo she looked right into the lens.

In terms of the technical aspects of the lighting, this was straight forward – with no ambient light to speak of I was able to light it solely using the softbox, so step 1 was to go to the max sync speed of 1/250s, and a low ISO of 200 for the best image quality.   I didn’t need, or want, much depth of field as the camera is largely parallel to the bed.  An aperture of f/5.6 would give me good sharpness but still be kind to the flash – nice and wide so as to not require it to throw out too much light each time it popped.  And given that I was photographing a 12 week old, kind to the flash in this respect was also kind to the subject.  The less light per flash the better.

The position of the softbox, had I not described it already, is given away by the highlight in Faye’s eyes (as the position of light sources often is) and by the soft shadows, which also tell of its relative size (large).

This was one of the later photos in this photo shoot, but also one of my favourites.  With it in the bag it was time to return to the bouncy castle intelligent adult conversation.