We like doing things BIG! Why would we want to settle for normal? For his 6th birthday we gave Jayden a photoshoot. I guess you could say that this photoshoot was more ‘technical’ than many of our other photoshoots, so we did some test shots before he arrived. We set up two strobe lights in the middle of a sports field. These two joggers kept watching us as we were setting up. I’m pretty weird so I started jogging with them and asked if we could take some test photos of them (I don’t come across as camera shy but I’m a tad hesitant to have my photo taken if there are other victims around). They humored me and this is the shot we got.

The test shot turned out great and so we decided that 2 strobes at dusk were the way to go and we asked Jayden to meet us the next evening. We arrived at the soccer fields and got to work setting up. We also brought a tripod and some foam mats for Jayden to land on for the jumping photos. The jumping pictures are composite photos. We set up the tripod and took a photo with no one and nothing but the background in the picture. Then, keeping the camera exactly where it was on the tripod we shot some photos of Jayden jumping for the ball. In Photoshop, we layered the empty background photo under the jumping photo and erased the mats.

I saw some pictures on Pinterest of “dirty faces” that I wanted to try so I mixed up a concoction of my night mask and instant coffee. I think the results were a pass, don’t you?