Thos quick and dirty "family gathering" indoor portraits

I have posted one of my portraits for critique and here I will post another and just get your general comments.

Family comes in for thanksgiving and you have no way or area to set up a portrait area. You snap the best shots you think you can get at the time.

This was my first opportunity to use my flash unit for any indoor portraiture. This Sunpak PZ40X flash is not a TTL unit so I had to use manual mode and set the power output manually. I used the Opteka small on-flash soft box attachment and bounced the flash off the ceiling.

I was pretty happy with the outcome, at least the exposure, but my aunts house is the typical "grand mother" house cluttered with photos on the walls, items along the fireplace mantel, etc.

No good blank space for a backdrop.

So give up your comments! Lemme have it!

Warm and happy looking shot my friend!

excellent exposure Mike. It is great satisfaction when you shoot in manual. TTL is great when moving around a lot, but I prefer manual when in a situation where I can take more control.

With busy backgrounds one thing to try is blow it out with defocus as much as possible. Could you have either backed up and zoomed a bit more, or moved the couple further from the wall..? And use the most shallow depth of field you can get.

One other thing to try.. drop out the background. First, find the proper shutter speed that will make your background as dark as you can. Then move your flash as close as you can to the subjects. This will allow you to use less power on your flash unit to create as much fall-off as possuble to keep your background darker...

Just one more thing. you could have taken a shot a wee bit lower and the pic on the wall may have been lower in the shot so as not to interfere with the subjects head.

These however are just sugestions, I'm sure you were a bit distracted by focusing your attention on the exposure. Now that you have the exposure going on, you have mental energy left to focus on the other things.

Just suggestions for a different photo; The photo is great the way it is...!

Chip

chipjohns said:

With busy backgrounds one thing to try is blow it out with defocus as much as possible. Could you have either backed up and zoomed a bit more, or moved the couple further from the wall..? And use the most shallow depth of field you can get.

One other thing to try.. drop out the background. First, find the proper shutter speed that will make your background as dark as you can. Then move your flash as close as you can to the subjects. This will allow you to use less power on your flash unit to create as much fall-off as possuble to keep your background darker...

Just one more thing. you could have taken a shot a wee bit lower and the pic on the wall may have been lower in the shot so as not to interfere with the subjects head.

Chip

Click to expand...

In my head I know that there is a way to drop the background in darkness using shutter speed but for whatever "duh moment" reason I failed to even think about this at that moment. I need to try this more and see what I need to do as to settings to achieve this.