This little guy could be the Gerber baby. So easy to work with…nothing but smiles. I could only wish all the little ones we photograph were so easy. He gave us a lot of smiles and this was at the very end of the session. Have a look to see how this image was shot.

The End Result

The Diagram

How it was shot

As you can see from the diagram this was a 3 light setup. For the main light there is a medium Chimera softbox on an Elinchrom 600RX triggered by Elinchrom Skyports. The light is lower the ground, camera left and is slightly pointed down. Both baffles were in place to provide nice soft light on Seth.

Background lights were 2ea Alien Bee 800′s

The background was a roll of white seamless paper and on the floor, Seth is laying on white tile board. I think Home Depot should give Zack Arias some money for all the white tile board he has sold for them. This is what gives the nice reflection.

I wanted to make sure I got all of Seth in focus and I was working fairly close to him. I shot this at F/11 using a 50mm lens. Lots of depth of field in the scene.

The main light was brought up until he was exposed at F/ll and the background lights were metered to be about 1/3rd to 1/2 stop over to get the nice white effect.

Anything which was not 100% white was dodged out in Photoshop…but for the most part… very little post work required.

Do pay attention to how you place your back lights and how high you set them. The lighting bouncing off the background can flare in to your lens. If you find this to be an issue, I would suggest putting something in front of each light to prevent the light from spilling back. Reflectors, foam boards, etc.

Fairly simple setup with very nice results.