My little one decided to try baseball to see how he liked it. So far so good. He enjoys the game and training up to now and seems to be a happy camper.
Here are some pictures of his first game. He was really happy when he hit the ball and run the bases.
One of the many joys of being a parent.
This past weekend I tried a simple lighting set up with my daughter Sofia prior to shooting some head shots of Lucca, a cute young actor.
The lighting set up was basically a main light. Paul C Buff Einstain E 640 with an Octabox and a grid on it to better direct the light. The strobe was placed overhead at 45deg angle. Lucca (the model) was holding a small gold and sliver reflector on his lap to bounce light back into his face as a fill. The other light source was a rim/hair light. This was a Travelite 750 fitted with a 10″ reflector and a 40deg grid to avoid light spill and lens flare. The pictures were done with a Canon 5D MrkIII and a Canon 70-200 ef 2.8 IS L set at f8.
Below it’s a simple diagram of the lighting set up for this two portraits.
Getting ready for Christmas? I’ve been having some fun lately
Here is my little nephew wrapped in Christmas lights. We had fun taking some pictures of him.
Here I was trying to take a picture of my little boy and as I was pressing the shutter release he decided to do a stunt jump. Nothing happened to him. I love the picture since it was quite unexpected and it would make a darn good commercial image for children’s place.
My wife did not enjoyed the picture as much as I did.
Leap of faith.
Dia de los muertos (day of the dead) at Hollywood Forever cemetery.
This was my first time attending such event and I must say, I had a great time. I could not believe the amount of people there. For starters I had to park the car almost 1 mile away from the cemetery. There were thousands of people there, and for the most part the vast majority were dressed up in all kinds of colorful costumes, families, couples young and old. It was great.
There were all kinds of things to see. Rows of altars honoring people. All kinds of display and little shops. Live bands and performers. And of course a bunch of good food.
Here are some of the pictures I came up with.
Kids grow fast. Very fast. That’s what they do. On the other hand I take a bunch of pictures of them and I do that very often. I like to think I do a decent job at keeping up with their growth pictures.
Here are some recent ones. Some are just for the sake of taking pictures, some others are ideas I see online or things that pop on my mind.
Now that Sofia is almost 9 and Sebastian is 5 I can go back in time and find pictures of just about every week of the year. I love that.
I enjoy Kids photography a lot, it’s fun. You sure will not regret all those pictures in 5 or 10 years.
Don’t forget that they will not stop growing and will not be kids forever.
Here are some pictures we did a few weeks back of baby Sophia. Her mom ask for either black and withe or sepia/toned images. I did a little bit of both to see what style she likes better. I think this baby would look great with any finish.
I just finished doing a shoot for a newborn baby girl. The session went great since the little one literately slept like a baby.
The set up was quite simple, I used a photography posing table to set the basket with the baby, that made it easy for moving and positioning. The lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 one with a 11″ reflector set with a 30Deg grid for the background and the other one with a larger Photoflex softbox that was placed very close to the baby on camera’s right. On the left side of the camera as a fill light I used a Canon 580EXII with a 2×2 Lastolite softbox . All lights were triggered with Pocket Wizards Flex TT5 and a Pocket Wizard mini TT1 with the AC3 controller on the camera as the master. The camera was a Canon 7D and the two lenses for this shoot were a Canon Ef 100 macro F2.8 and as Canon Ef 24-70 f2.8L. I used the 100 macro 90% of the time for the session. I set it at f5.6 since I was looking for a rather shallower DOP.
For the post work I used Adobe Bridge to organize and tag the files with colors and stars. From there I migrated the raw files to ACR to do some adjustments and then open in Photoshop CS5 to do the last part. Here I did a few different styles in terms of post work from color, to black and white, duo tones and playing with vibrance and saturation tools.
Thanks for looking.
I welcome questions and suggestions.
Alex Elias
Last week’s family shoot went out very nice nicely. Everyone was ready and very willing to make this work, specially the 6-year-old that turned out to be a star. She sure had a blast modeling and working the camera. She tried a few different looks and also did her own make up, which by the way I think she did pretty good for 6 years of age; For sure better than I would have done.
The equipment I took with me for the shoot was my Canon 7D and although I took about 5 lenses the Canon EF 24-70 2.8 L was the one that I used all the time. Lighting was done with 2 Travelites 750 triggered via pocket wizards Mini and Flex and I fitted the lights with one 48×60 photoflex Softbox for the main, and an umbrella using the bouncing side as a fill. I shot everything at F9.0 and a few at F11 for good depth of field and ISO set at 200. The one thing I must confess is that I left the white balance on auto, I forgot to lock it and now I’ll have to spend a bit of extra time in CS5 with the color correction.
Overall it was a great day and I enjoyed the session a lot.
I Just did some family portraits with a different look. (CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE LARGER) Taking the pictures for the final image was not too involved (aside from the lack of cooperation from my 3 yr son) In this series of shots I used one main light to camera right ( Travelite 750 with a 36″x 48″ Photoflex soft box) on the opposite side (camera left next to the kids) I went with a 48″ x 60″ withe reflector to bounce light and fill in the shadows. I set the camera ( Canon 7D with a EF 24-70 2.8L ) at ISO 100 F9.0 and triggered the strobe with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and a Flex TT5. Later in the shoot I introduced a Canon 580 EXII without diffusion as a hair light to create some separation that was also triggered with a Flex TT5. I set that flash to manual and used a Pocket Wizard AC3 to control the output of that flash.
The overall steps are not to complicated. I used 2 pieces of withe foam core from the arts supply for $5 each. On one I cut a 13″x16″ hole in the center and the other one was left intact. I First took the pictures of the kids inside the frame and then I took mine holding the board without the cut off. The rest was done in Photoshop using layers.
Thanks for looking
Alex Elias
My family
Alex's pictures and Photo tips 
