Herding Cats

Taking pictures of a child is difficult.  Many times they aren't going to cooperate for the picture you have planned in your head.  They also want to ham for the camera, and as soon as they see the flash go off, or hear the shutter they run at you at 90 mph wanting to see the back of the camera.  That 90mph ball of "let me see, let me see!" makes me want to try using film for kids sometime.

The difficulty rises when you want  a picture of more than one child.  This isn't a problem of linear complexity either.  I think for each child you add to a picture the picture is twice as hard to make as it was before you added him or her.

My wife thought we should get a picture of our two and their cousins-- together.  This, of course, is a great idea.  However, this is hard.

Here, a picture helps explain.

There should be 4 children in this picture.  There isn't.  So, we have one child missing.  One child wonders if the shrubbery is edible.  The oldest is standing where she was asked, and the youngest felt it was a great a time to try out for WWE.  Obviously, this is not the picture we had in mind.

As you can see at the top we got it to work out though, eventually.  It took a bench, and a helping hand running about, holding the attention of our subjects, getting real laughs.

I haven't been sticking these in as much lately but: Lighting is a shoe-flash as a light rim light, and an AB800 through an umbrella to the camera right.  Sun is doing the rest.