It was Desiree’s birthday yesterday and we had some chill out time before we celebrated her birthday. So we found ourselves in the playground downstairs with Michael, who very wisely brought along those bubble-blowing thingy. Jeesh, I don’t even know what they’re called. Ok, I’m out of touch. Can’t go wrong with those things….never fails in putting a smile on kids, and that’s the key to the pictures.

Before that, Desiree went completely mad around the playground climbing up and down the slide for the umpteenth time, expanding a lot of the youthful energy she had. Grabbed a couple of shots and then headed back for the indoor family shots.

Happy Birthday Desiree!

Desiree and grandparents

For the indoor shots, I fired 2 580EX flashes mounted on stands: one on camera left a bit slightly behind them, set at Manual at lowest setting 1/128, just to provide some accent light. Main light was on camera right, pointing at the ceiling for bounce and set at Manual, at 1/8 setting. With these two lights, I could use a smaller aperture for maximum sharpness and with a reasonable shutter speed. There was almost no ambient light in the picture. I left the colour temperature to a bit warmer since the place had warm lighting. But had I depended solely on the ambient light for lighting, it’ll be hard to get the direction and quality of light you see.

More of such images can be found in the Family Photography category.