Family shots

Took these yesterday. I wish I had some seamless paper or a better background in general. We had to work with what we had and settled on the drapes in the living room. Other idea was to use OOF lights as a background as many have done on here but chose not to last minute.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mszuminski/6498​771467/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/mszuminski/6498​771359/

Hi Mike,

The background is a bit distracting and I would probably use a different color shirt in solid colors, its hard to take photos of your own family, the little girl so looks like she does not want to hug her brother.

Thank you barbara. At first I didnt find the background distracting but more I look at it the less I like it.
Green was my wife's choice. Good thing we can just have a do-over.
I probably should have killed the ambient (floor lamp) altogether with higher shutter speed and darken the background in the process.

She actually did want that picture but then he might have squeezed her too hard.

yea, that background is a little busy ... and the non-matching greens of the shirts throws off what are really cute pictures.

Do-overs are never a bad thing!

As far as lighting goes are these OK? They do seem bright although nothing is blown out. I used a single speedlight through a softbox with the reflector on the right.

I think the light is fine in both of them, there are no bad shadows, you got some nice catchlights in the eyes and you can see the pretty shade of brown in the eyes. If they were my photos, I'd convert them to B/W to remove the distraction of color in that lime green shirt, which dominates the image. I love the sweet expression on the kids in that second shot. Very nice.

B/W is a nice idea. I will try to play with that.

Thank you Sue

Smyke, the exposure looks nice, and the pics do look sharp! What lense did you use?

Thanks Pete.
It was Canon 50mm 1.8 Mark 1

I agree the background is too busy and distracting

We will not be using that for the background ever again, thats for sure. LOL