Peaceful Family Christmas?!?!?

[Aaronius]

Hi all,

I took this shot on Christmas night with friends and family....



Some ambient lighting from the room, but used a Canon 430ex speedlight on its stand underneath the guy in the middle.

Camera: Canon 7d
1/100th f10
Sigma 17-70 lens @ 28mm
Flash triggered off-camera using the built-in wireless system

Post-production work done in photoshop to desaturate, and add "power up energy lines." Stock photos of smoke overlaid using the lighten layer mode and various colour adjustment layers to manually adjust each person's power to be a different colour.

What was I trying to achieve? It was one of my fist "scene" shots with an idea in mind. Even though it was rough and ready, I have been able to show the "models" what can be done with a little bit of imagination and forethought.

I think the overall result more or less gets to where I wanted the shot to go, but if I had proper control over the environment then I would have chosen a plain background, so I could separate the models from the background. (this could be done in this image, but I didn't want to cut the background out with the pen tool - because it can be long winded.)

Also, the models don't really look particularly committed to their role, but as it was for fun I wont hold that against them.

Comment / crit / suggestions welcome!

Thanks,
Aaron

[renzdurano]

this is so beautiful...i like this!

[Aaronius]

Thank you .