Need help with lighting on a maternity shoot

[lulu04]

I am doing a photo shoot for my SIL and brother. I have all the images that I want to take in my head but have a hard time with lighting. I am going to be shooting where there is a LOT of light coming through the windows. What would your recommendations be for backdrops, lenses and settings? Where do you put the backdrop in respect to the window? I have never done in door photos so I am feeling a lot of pressure. Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[BigFuzzy]

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but the place to start is a basic understanding of your camera and lighting.

I say this because your question is basically "how do I take pictures" with the only caveat being "indoors".

In order for us to best help you it'd help if you told us what camera you have, and what lenses. No point me telling you to use a lens you don't have right?
Also, what lighting tools do you have besides a window? Do you have a flash or reflector? A reflector at minimum is needed in my opinion. In what direction (N,S,E,W) is your window facing? Do you know how to change your settings to at least using something like Aperure Priority or Shutter Priority?

Also, what sorts of shots are you wanting to take? Full body, portrait, 3/4th, etc? All?

Quick answer would be to tell you that you need a fast lens (if you don't know what I mean by that, that's where the 'basic' stuff comes in) such as a 50m f/1.8 but if you're using an cropped sensor, that may be too long for you to use indoors. How much space do you have indoors? Kit lenses will be tough to use indoors because they're slow unless you have lots of light or the ability to bump up your ISO, but you want to avoid that as much as possible.

Backdrops: To me if you hang a sheet on the wall and we can see the wrinkles in it after you shoot, you might as well not use it because, to me, it looks crappy. But it's fixable in PP, do you know any PS or Lightroom? If you're using a lens that allows shallow DoF, then your background is less important as you can blur it out. Keep your backgrounds simple and as little busy as possible. For indoor shots, I like using the environment as long as it works and is simple.

Make sure you get catchlights in your subjects eyes but don't shoot pop-up flash directly into their faces.. learn to diffuse your pop-up if you have to use it due to lack of light.

Ensure you get at least 1/60th of a second shutter speed, if you're really new, I'd aim for 1/100th to ensure sharpness. Learn how to focus on the eyes, that, to me, is crucial in portraits.

Do you have a suggestion of a photo online that you love and would like us to tell you what to do to try to emulate that sort of shot?

No chance of taking these photos outdoors in open shade?

Again, it's really hard for use to help you with a question that's basically, "how do I take nice photos, indoors" without giving us a bit more info. We're generally very helpful here, but you have to give us a little.

I hope you have some time.. good luck! And feel free to post more info and I'm sure others will jump in as well.

Al

[BigFuzzy]

Crap... totally missed the word "maternity" in your post title..
that tells us a LOT more... sorry!! Though my previous comments mostly apply, let me put a bit more thought into my answer...and see if I can be a bit more concrete..

Ack. attention to detail Al..

[BigFuzzy]

You have two ways you can go as i see it.
1. Natural light soft traditional sort of thing
2. More portrait style photos

I'll use some of my examples, some I'm happy with some not.
Traditional:
with these, you often don't use flash and try to have that nice soft warm cheesey (imo) photos. In this case you're likely to want to put the subject where the backgroudnd is not distracting and in my case below, the window itself if the background: You also want to make sure you expose for the subject so it blows the background




Or you could go a different route and have a more portrait-y style of maternity shoot that, to me, is more modern and fun. This will require use/knowledge of flash (I used one flash through an umbrella here:



or even more fun