Can you take my family pictures… there’s 18 of us!!
Not often you get asked to take a family of 18. That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago. As you know I predominantly take from maternity to 8-9-year-olds, not too many families, certainly, the biggest to date has been 5.
Out of my comfort zone
That would be an underestimation. I didn’t sleep too well the night before, dreaming of posing and getting everyone looking at the camera together. Trying to remember what the fabulous lighting master, Gary Hill, teaches me on my mentoring classes.
So I decided that I would use one of my gorgeous hand painted backdrops. First problem was I couldn’t get down the backdrop from the HIGH rails (a problem with working with 6ft blokes in a studio! ) so I put huge mark down the white wall as it crashed down, so that wall was out of use. As I put up the backdrop stand, I hear something drop, just the tiniest of pieces, and I can’t find it and now that stand won’t stay up…This is not going so well and they would be here in 20 minutes.
Luckily, Lee, my studio partner arrived just in the nick of time to help. Sorted the lighting, metered it ( yes Gary!) forgot the grey card :-/ got out stools, boxes and anything else I could sit someone one. Bang on 10 am they started to arrive, a small group then some more and some more and some more…
Camera and Action
Then it was camera action… try and remember what you have been taught, look at heights, ages, genders, who is who’s relative… how to start to place them in the picture. I didn’t want it to look like just two rows of statues. This was to be a present for a great grandmas for her 85th Borthday. so let’s get started, firstly the full group, then took the grandchildren and great granchildren, individual family shots. Making memories for everyone, made my mind up I want some family ones taking of the girls, John and me very soon!
Get outside your comfort zone it’s not that scary!
To say I was dreading it, I rather enjoyed myself. Not that I want to do that every week, but definitely wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. It’s always good to stretch outside your comfort zone. When you’re back in it, there’s a sense of achievement!