Family Photos in Abuquerque

I took a few photos for this neat family last Friday evening. They wanted photos of everyone while the grandmother was here visiting. We planned it to be shortly before sunset to use the shade behind their house for a more diffused light and take advantage of the pretty sky in the background for another setting on their back deck area. Everyone was patient and cooperative - quite a feat for any group of children!

In the first shot we used pure natural light, as they were in the shadow cast by the house, on the hill right behind their house. I used aperture priority mode, with an aperture of f/10 so as to keep everyone in focus. I had to overexpose as the sky was bright, with evaluative exposure bias of 2/3 of a stop. This brought my shutter speed to 1/160 of a second. Since I was using a focal length of 50mm, this shutter speed was just ok as long as no one was really moving. In order to get at least this I bumped the ISO to 1250.

In this second shot, I used my studio lights. I used two right next to each other for the main light in order to get enough light on everyone.  I had go to complete manual on my camera for this. I wanted the background to be darker than in the previous photo, so first I set the camera to expose for the background and then adjusted the lights so the family would be properly exposed.