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My first born turns nine years old tomorrow. I've created a little project for myself where I take a portrait the day before my boys' birthdays. This year my oldest is all about his Nintendo 3DS. So I figured that I'd work it in to his portrait. At first Luc was not into sitting for his birthday portrait. But after I suggested that we incorporate his new favourite toy then he was all over it.

Light is with two Nikon Speedlights. A snooted SB-800 zoomed to 105mm on manual 1/128th power with a half CTB is directly behind the 3DS firing into a piece of white paper on the surface of the DS. This is reflecting back into Luc's face. A bare SB-24 zoomed to 24mm is on the ground behind me bounced up onto the wall and ceiling behind me combining with the natural window light camera left to give me my all over base exposure. Strobes triggered with Pocket Wizards.

I exaggerated the contrast between his face and the background, brightened his eyes and added a vignette in Lightroom.

Another from the series below.

The lights in the background are star shaped christmas lights that we bought from Ikea several years ago that were strung across a background stand. A couple of feet behind those are the vertical blinds in the living room. Tracy is lit with a single White Lightning Ultra 600 in a small Chimera soft box with internal baffle installed pretty close-in. Power is all the way down to keep the aperture wide and to control spill. Shutter speed is quite slow (1/13 second on this one) to let those Christmas lights burn in. The slow shutter speed required the use of a tripod. Strobe fired using Pocket Wizards.

This one was shot with my 50mm. Usually I don't like the look of the 50mm in this close, but I think it works on this photo.

Skin polishing, split tone, selective dodge and burn all done in Lightroom.

Another image from my christmas light session with my wife Tracy. This time I exported from Lightroom into Photoshop to create more blur effects, then re-imported into Lightroom and applied film grain and a final de-saturation. Again, very happy.

The lights in the background are star shaped christmas lights that we bought from Ikea several years ago that were strung across a background stand. A couple of feet behind those are the vertical blinds in the living room. Tracy is lit with a single White Lightning Ultra 600 in a small Chimera soft box with internal baffle installed up camera right about 4 ft away. Power is all the way down to keep the aperture wide and to control spill. Shutter speed is quite slow (1/4 second on this one) to let those Christmas lights burn in. The slow shutter speed required the use of a tripod. Strobe fired using Pocket Wizards.