The forgiving nature of children. What is a birthday party without a good photo session. Especially if the days activities are starting to wear of and it is time for something adventurously new.
Why forgiving? They did not care if the sun was already setting and the technicalities of light quality and all the adult blah blah blah. The excitement they offered made this such a fun session, and not even to speak about spontaneous.
For the most, I could not keep up with how quick they had a new pose ready. I could not compose them better If I tried, and I prefer that for maintaining the character of each person.
So, who is the birthday girl? Her. The one right in the middle in the center of the focal composition of this image. I did not compose that. They arranged themselves in a split second. i had to be quick. Very quick I will admit, or this would have been missed because it did not last a second. The moment they see a flash go of, for them that was it the photo is done, time for change. That brings me to the technical bits. I had to use flash, or two for that matter (well three but the third is sync related. I will explain later). The available light was just none existing and I arrived 15 minutes before sunset. I had to rapidly construct my game plan for the session from the multiple blogs and videos I have followed on speed-lights.
I triggered two separate NIKON speed-lights with the build in "pop up" flash on a NIKON D7000 with a warm filter over flash on camera left filtered through a ROUNDFLASH. On camera flash was dialed down to its lowest in order to only trigger and not contribute to the available light on my subject.
The intention to further filter the warm light is to create a cozy ambient, almost candle lit, light and a colder light to camera right to not hide the fact that they are outdoors (further thanks to their forgiveness and enthusiasm to have fun in front of the camera despite the otherwise rather cold"ish" night).
I love the versatility of what speed-lights enable us to do without the expense of additional triggers and receivers. This very basic setup and equipment made for a result both the client and photographer is happy with (ok...photographer maybe not completely satisfied and hundreds of things I will do better next time. I do enjoy the fact that I am learning all the time though. There is no rush to eliminate the learning factor)