Family portraits in Scotland

Photographing people is what I love most, private hires for family/couple portraits is always something I really relish, each client has different wishes and it’s always fun to get heads together to make a plan to suit their needs. It doesn’t matter where the shoot happens, at home or overseas, each village or town in each country has it’s own character which adds something to the photos.

Last year one of the nicest couples we shot was an American husband and wife, Matthew and LaKeeva, who live just outside of Tokyo. As well as being a couple shoot, this was a bit different as LaKeeva was heavily pregnant at the time, so technically it was a bit of a maternity shoot as well.

As with all private clients, I like to meet up first to talk about what they want out of the shoot and then bounce ideas off them to see what I can bring to the shoot for them. They told me they were working in Japan for a few years and then would return to the States, so they wanted to preserve the memory of their time in Japan when LaKeeva was pregnant. They didn’t really have any set ideas, so were quite open to suggestions, we sat and talked over a coffee for a while and came up with a plan together of having a bit of a mixed theme, start off somewhere in Tokyo in casual clothes, then move on to some different venues and have a bit of a clothes change. They wanted a mix of venues, something a bit more traditional and something a bit more modern. After our initial meeting I went home, had a think about potential venues that could be easily reached from each other (always an important consideration with a heavily pregnant woman) and send off some proposals with some stock shots to give them an idea of venues. A few emails and calls later, we had decided on a plan, start off in Ueno park, then move down to Shibuya and finally Shinjuku.

We met for the first time in the beginning of July during the rainy season and set a date for the 3rd week of July, but rain meant we had to cancel and we re-arranged to shoot in the last wekeend of July. Again, rain loomed, but on the day the clouds broke a bit and we decided to go for it. As usual, Sue was there to help me with lights and make suggestions about poses and always talking to the couple when I set up light stands, softboxes etc. It really does make such a difference having someone else helping you on a shoot, an extra brain and pair of eyes just adds to the possibilities. We brought the 5D mkII, the 7D as a back up (which we didn’t use), for lenses we took the 17-40mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm and 50mm, two 580 EX speedlites, the ST-E2 speedlite transmitter, 2 light stands, a softbox, a white umbrella and a tripod..

So, we started off in Ueno park, we just walked through some of the main spots and found some secluded places just that little bit away from the crowds. We started off on a stairway in front of a small shrine, we took some test shots of the couple in different poses, standing together on the stairs, Matthew on a step below his wife to make them the same height, but finally we decided that LaKeeva on Matt’s knee worked best. This shot was with the 50mm lens, the area where they were sitting was covered by trees and causing a lot of shadows, so we used one speedlite to bottom right of the shot and Sue holding another to top left of the shot. I had the lens at f2 where it is sharpest to get them both in focus and blur out a lot of the background and this is the result:

Then, off to a nearby temple with an open veranda where we went for another seated shot. This time I used the 24-70mm at about 35mm and after a bit of light experimentation, we used one speedlight, to top right of the shot, Sue just holding up the flash, it’s never really a good idea setting up light stands in temple grounds if you can avoid it I thought…

Just behind the platform where we shot the previous shot, there was a nice little walkway leading under a temple which formed a nice back frame with an arch. The light was good, I put on the 50mm lens and Sue just chatted away with them and I shot away as they smiled and laughed, this was my favourite shot from the bunch, a nice little moment that just occurred. Sometimes some of the best shots are from the unplanned moments.

After walking down the path we found ourselves under some more trees with the temple a bit higher up. It was pretty well shaded, so I set up a light stand with a softbox in front of the couple, to the right of the shot and it really lit them up beautifully. Sue thought it would be nice to get a shot of them both holding LaKeeva’s belly, I wanted to get a nice low angle to show the temple in the background, but not too blurred, so I used the 17-40 lens at f7.1, I liked the end result, quite elegant:

A short walk away there was a nice set of torri gates, a lot of people were walking under them, so we just had to wait for a few minutes to get a window to shoot in, we played a bit with lights as people were walking by, but in the end we didn’t need any as we were getting enough from the ambient light.

Through the torri gates to the temple behind and I changed to the 70-200mm lens and just let the couple chat away and I snapped them as they did, again with no lights.

All in all, we spend perhaps and hour or so in Ueno, it really was very hot, so we went off for a coffee and a bit of a rest, then a change of clothes and we moved on to Shibuya where we wanted to do something with a bit more of a modern background. There was only really one shot we wanted to get there, the couple at the scramble crossing just out from Shibuya station. For this shot, I wanted to get a sense of motion with the foreground and background in focus. First of all, I wanted to get an idea of the speed the crowd at the crossing was moving and I found 1/5 of a second gave a nice blur. At that speed it’s too slow a shutter speed to hand hold, so I set up the tripod, had my 17-40mm lens on to get a lot of the surroundings in, set the f-value to 18 and lit the shot with a single speedlight, Sue holding it above and behind my head down onto Matthew and LaKeeva. We got the shot we were after pretty quickly and 10 minutes after arriving at Shibuya, we were on our way to Shinjuku:

Shinjuku was the last stop of the day. LaKeeva had really liked the idea of having a portrait done in front of the Robert Indiana “Love” sculpture. On the way from the station we had a couple of stops t get some shots done, one of my favourites was on a bridge with some of the Shinjuku govt. buildings and skyscrapers in the background. Again, I had the 17-40mm lens on to get a nice wide shot, I got in close and my favourite results were coming from Sue holding a speedlite to the left of the shot, pointing the light towards Matthew and LaKeeva at a 45 degree angle. lighting up the left of them and leaving the right slightly darker, creating a nice contrast which I felt was quite elegant:

Lastly, we came to the Love sculpture and we shot from a lot of different angles, my favourite being a low shot with the 17-40 again. This time, we used two speedlites again, one held low to the right of the shot by Sue lighting up the front of Matthew, the second behind LaKeeva, providing a nice bright backlight.

After the shoot I had a few hundred photos, I sent previews of the best 80 or so edits to Matthew and LaKeeva, printed off a variety of A3-2L size prints and gave them all the edited jpegs on a CD and the job was done. In some ways, these kind of shoots are my favourites, photos in a newspaper or magazine are seen and soon forgotten, private clients have photos they are going to look at enjoy for years to come.