Newest Set -- Winter White/Ballerina Babies

So here is this year's Winter White set.  We're running these special white sessions for the next two weeks, and we can customize the set for families and individuals.  We also have a special "add on" for little ballerinas that includes the barre and Tim Teddy in a tutu (Charlotte was very very upset that I would force a boy bear to wear girl clothes, but the promise of chocolate was enough for her to overlook the insult).

This is set up on our north light wall, and we're shooting everything we can with window light.  Sometimes, with a family, this isn't really practical so we go ahead and drag the softbox over.  We still get the nice, soft window light look, but I have to work harder to light the background to keep everything looking natural.  So for individuals, as long as we're getting enough light, we'll shoot with the window as our main light for these sessions.

I knew we'd be using a rough wooden barre for the ballerinas, so I wanted the rest of the set to be soft and flowy with shades of white and tan.  The background is netting curtains from Ikea on a background stand, pooled at the floor.  The barre is a wooden dowel attached to some old light stands, which are covered with soft white material as well.  This set still needs something for the little ballerinas... I think some pink rose petals and some satin ribbon will help finish it off for our sessions this week.  The background is set back about six inches from one window, and the barre is set back about a foot from what we're using as our "main light" window.  The barre and the background are about 6 feet apart.  I'm also using a 4x6 silver reflector for some fill on the shadow side.  I metered Charlotte's face and shot by those readings -- today was very darkly overcast, so my readings were ISO 320, 1/80th (shooting from a camera stand) @ 3.5, shooting with the D200 and the 85mm lens.  With a more active kid, I would have had to bump up that shutter speed to avoid kid motion blur, OR I would have used the strobes to make life a little easier.  Charlotte is a good model and knows to stay (mostly) put, so I knew I could shoot with window light for her, even with less than ideal lighting conditions, and still get sharp images.  Plus, I knew that a little grain would be okay, because I wanted these to have a handcolored, more filmy look.

I always shoot in RAW, so in Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw I added contrast and then opened them in Photoshop.  These have a Kubota BW action applied and then backed off to about 70%, and I brought back a tiny bit of additional spot color in the cheeks and lips.  Then I added one of the Kubota grain filters to complete that ambient light/high speed bw film look that I was going for.  I will post some family images using the strobes on the studio/client blog later on this week so you can see the difference in the overall look as well as in how we will process those.  It is very easy for me to move my equipment around in the studio, so if we decide we need supplemental/artificial light it's right there -- I just change my meter back to strobe, meter, change camera settings, and go.

A big thank you to the fabulous Jen Hillenga for the inspiration.  :)