Portraits with Kyle

Posted on 06. Apr, 2009 by Leo Kowal in Portfolio, Portraits

Last week I got a chance to shoot (almost) 5 year old Kyle. Kyle is the son of an old friend that I’ve known since Freshman year of high school. She actually originally contacted me because her computer was on the fritz and I mentioned that I do photography as well. When I first met Kyle, I knew that he would be great in the studio and the images show it!

I don’t have much experience shooting children, but the few times I have, I ended up working with boys and I think they start to feel more comfortable in front of all the lights when I show them how good my fake fart noises sound (Thanks to my friend Kurt for teaching me). Some of the poses in the shots below are pretty much your standard portrait poses, while others were totally spur of the moment. During this photo shoot, I thought to myself, what if I told Kyle to tell me a story. Turns out that it really helped get some great shots. By telling a story, he forgot that he was being photographed and started acting more natural. In addition, some of the better laughing photos were the result of fake flatulent sounds. I’m 26 and I still think farts are hilarious!

Like my other white background shoots, it is fairly straight forward. Two umbrellas bouncing Alien Bee 800’s at the seamless white background and one medium softbox for the key light. Whibal for white balancing roughly 5300K. Camera’s shutter set to sync speed 1/200th of a second and the aperture at around f/11, ISO 100.