My 1st Try at Studio Shots

[mdonahoe1]

I think these are beautiful shots! I hope to be able to do this someday!

Marianne

[britainy]

First of all... those are TWO GORGEOUS kiddo's! WOW... you'll be counting your blessings years
from now that you took those photos... take more!

Like Jerry said... separate your subjects from the backdrop more. Flash photography...
not my forte' yet. Jerry is the "flash-guru" and has posted some great insight in earlier posts.
Search for them... they're here... I've read them.

THank you for the comment on my kids

A flash by itself is already an improvement, but don't forget to invest in a basic shoot-through umbrella (maybe $20?), this makes the light so soft and diffused.

I wrote a huge 2 post section on portrait hints... do a search, there is a lot of good stuff in there.

Yes I actually have that post saved and will be re reading through again THank you for all the advice Jerry!

I think these are beautiful shots! I hope to be able to do this someday!

Marianne

Thank you Marianna

[jimboudreaux]

Britainy, first off i think you're really good at getting good poses out of the kids, so kudos for that. Now I'll share what little I know about studio lighting. You can probably replace those 45w bulbs with 85 bulbs.. that's what I did with mine. It made a huge difference in what shutter speeds I could use and keep my ISO lower. here's a couple shots of my daughter done with a single 85w bulb and a 45w to light the backdrop. Iso was 200 with f/7.1 at 1/40th. Oh, and I had a reflecter off to the left hand side too.

My wife also bought me a strobe kit for Christmas (which I'm not allowed to use until after Christmas lol). I was allowed however to give the equipment a quick test to be sure there was nothing wrong with it, and... wow what a difference! I'm telling you about this because the kit was less than $150. I don't know what your budget is, but mine's pretty small, so check it out http://www.amazon.com/500W-Professio...YEW/ref=sr_1_1. I'm pretty sure it can be shipped to Canada. It's an awesome deal for what seems to be pretty good quality equipment. It doesn't have much in the way of instructions, but setup is pretty simple(even for me, and this is my first set of strobes). You can add a softbox or barn doors later. And don't get rid of the lights you already got; they can always be used for fill-in if you need.
Your backdrops... wash them one at a time in cold water on gentle cycle. then hang from your backdrop support to dry. It needs to be lifted completely off the floor though, so secure the bottom end to something up high as well. pull any wrinkles out immediately after its hung up and all those creases will be gone.