Tell All Tuesday | Philadelphia Photographer

All right, folks. It's 10pm and I'm posting a quick Tuesday Tell All post.

First up - a picture of the beanbag I use for my newborn shots. What a beauty, right? It was $5 at a yard sale and it's actually a children's beanbag chair, but it works for now. You also get a free peek at my messy basement. You're welcome.

Secondly, a few people asked about my lighting in the last few sessions. I supplemented my window light with a small umbrella light I got when I very first started out and haven't used much at all until now. It's only 27 watt so the light it adds is minimal, but I like it because it doesn't create any weird white balance issues. HERE'S THE LINK to the one I own.

Lastly, a new piece of equipment I used in the last two newborn sessions is a gray card. HERE IS THE ONE I own (it's the same one Erin Cobb uses), and I've loved it so far for my indoor newborn sessions. I just got it at Christmas and haven't used it outside on a child/family shoot, so we'll see how well it translates into those types of sessions. But for my immobile subjects, it was really easy to use. Each time I set up a shot, I would hold the gray card near the subject and adjust my exposure to -0- on the center of the card. Then I'd set a custom white balance using the picture I just took, and then I'd shoot away without adjusting the exposure at all, even though in most cases my camera was telling me I was overexposing since I used a lot of white in my setup (Want to know why that is? READ UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE BY BRYAN PETERSON!). It was a quick step that saved me time in post-processing since my images were all nearly perfectly exposed (and let's face it, that just doesn't happen for me yet without a gray card).

Good luck in your photographic adventures this week! Feel free to email questions so I have something other than my gross basement to post next week.