Happy Thanksgiving

Canon 40D with 50 mm lens on a tripod. Since our faces were in the same plane, f8 was more than enough to keep us all in focus. Thanks Eric for taking our picture.

Happy Thanksgiving! This year I dragged out my portable studio for the Thanksgiving get-together.

Since I’ve made it a point to ask my students if they used their cameras over the weekend,  I felt I better “walk the walk not just talk the talk.”


Here’s the equipment or at least a sizable part of it.

Wireless triggering capability for your flash is a wonderful convenience but never take anything for granted.

After I was all set up, I found my radio slaves were not firing my flashes.

My 1st suspicion was a low battery in the transmitter.

But radio transmitters, like lots of things in the household these days, are also prone to EMF (electro magnetic frequency) interference from Wi-Fi network, microwave ovens or even cordless phones.

Always have a backup for such occasions, so hard wire sync cords are a must.

Above, you can see the area where I set up.

The main light an 800-watt second White lightning strobe inside the softbox.

It was counterbalanced against a weight on a boom to allow positioning of the support light stand off to the side.

The background light was a similar unit but with a background attachment.


The Dondes photographed very nicely because the kids cooperated.

I used the backdrop and draped it over the high stools so that Abby and Jonah came up to the same height as their parents.

The idea is to fill the “canvas” with what’s important—faces.

The bigger each face is in the frame, the more impact. Simple as that.

If I had enough sync cord, I would have shot with a longer lens to fill the frame even more.

Without my radio slaves, I was tethered to the main flash.

The length of the sync cord limited me to using a 100 mm telephoto.

And oh… almost forgot. 

I’m thankful my wife has a great job. It gave me an option and I don’t have to work at the Press-Enterprise newspaper.

2 thoughts on “Happy Thanksgiving”

  1. Do your wife or children ever get tired of you taking pictures of them? I got behind my camera during thanksgiving and I am still having trouble getting my family used to me taking pictures of them. I have at least 50 pictures of people giving the camera blank stares.

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