Jonathan Brady Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Over the last few months, I've tried to develop my eye and technique for shooting toddlers (with a 20 month old - it just kind of happened). Prior to this, I was mostly into close up and macro photography. Obviously, these are VERY different niches within photography so the learning curve has been STEEP.
Anyway, a friend of my wife and I was over with her daughter yesterday and asked if I wouldn't mind taking some photos of her at a location that's really neat. It's a secluded beach with a LOT of dead, sun-bleached trees, most of them overturned with their roots exposed. Here are a few images I snapped (to show my wife without driving the hour to get her out there) while on lunch break one day (so obviously the lighting is awful and we'll be going about an hour and a half before sunset instead)
The sun will be setting over the water.
What I'm curious to know is... for toddler portraits in this setting, would y'all recommend a large aperture, medium, or narrow? Or shot dependent? There are a lot of really harsh textures and angles of the wood and I worry that having that in the background/foreground of an image could throw off the feel of the images. So, should I go large aperture and blur it all, medium and get some, or small and get it all and really include the beachscape. My inclination is to go medium or small for most images but I just wanted to ask and get some other opinions.
Also, lens wise, I have an assortment to choose from. I'll be shooting with my 70D and I have: EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM, Sigma 35mm Art, EF 40mm f/2.8 STM, EF-S 60mm f/2.8 macro, EF 85mm f/1.8, EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6. I'm planning to bring 3 primes (24, 35, 85) and the zoom. Sound about right?
This will be the first time I've taken pictures of anyone else's kid. I'm not charging them as they do so much for us and also because I can't guarantee payment-worthy images. That said, I still want to deliver the very best images to them that I'm capable of. Because this is my first time photographing someone else's kid, I'm agonizing over a LOT of the variables that I'd never concern myself with for my daughter. So, thanks for indulging me
I appreciate any advice y'all can offer!
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