Help with pregnancy portrait

scottduffy

scottduffy

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Guys/Girls i have agreed to take some photos of my sister in law who is pregnant and would like some advice on the best way to achieve the look i'm after. I don't have any studio lights but i would like my sister in law lit in front of a black background. I have a black background but my problem is when i put on a lamp/light the whole picture gives off this horrible orange glow. Is there any way i could light her without the orange glow to the rest of the picture without studio or flash lighting? Is there a setting the 50d which would compensate for lamp/normal lighting? I'm not sure you'll get what i'm talking about but if you do any advice would be appreciated.
 
Could possible try and set the in camera WB to a tungsten setting, or try and find some bulbs that give off a whiter glow.
 
If you shoot in RAW, can you not sort out the WB to your taste?
 
I haven't used Raw yet. I usually just use fine jpeg. I will try the tungsten setting and see how we go. It's probably easy to get rid of the orange glow. I'll have another read of the 50d manual and see if i can work it out.
 
You'll need to adjust the white balance as normal household bulbs are very warm

Can you put the black background outside and shoot in natural light, or as the sun drops for a bit more directional lighting.

Have you a flashgun you can bounce off a piece of white card? Other household lights you can use?

You just need to be very creative when you don't have much
 
Or of course, depending where you are, perhaps another member would come and assist with the shoot with a bit more kit?
 
I've done a couple of pregnancy shoots, use RAW so you can adjust white balance if you get in wrong in the shoot. I've always used natural light for these types of shots (or very small bit of bounced fill in from camera mounted flash gun) and always in the persons own house so they felt more comfortable - although it helped that they had very photogenic houses as well. I did some shots around the house, on chairs etc and some against white walls so I could turn them in to hi key jobbies.

B&W for the win (in 'most' cases, take it on a per image basis though).

EDIT: These shots are a few years old and my first time doing 'people' & babies but again all taken in natural light, a couple with some fill flash. A couple of pregnancy ones in there (can't show the 'real' ones I'm afraid) but mostly of the baby.

Good luck :)
 
Last edited:
scottduffy said:
Guys/Girls i have agreed to take some photos of my sister in law who is pregnant and would like some advice on the best way to achieve the look i'm after. I don't have any studio lights but i would like my sister in law lit in front of a black background. I have a black background but my problem is when i put on a lamp/light the whole picture gives off this horrible orange glow. Is there any way i could light her without the orange glow to the rest of the picture without studio or flash lighting? Is there a setting the 50d which would compensate for lamp/normal lighting? I'm not sure you'll get what i'm talking about but if you do any advice would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I have recently done a pregnancy shoot. Although I work more on location and can't give advise on use of light. Have a look at my blog for the end result if you are interested.
 
Easiest way to get it right "in camera" is to use a grey card.

You just take a picture of the card held where your subject will be - then in the camera menu choose "custom white balance" and select the image you just took.

Setting your camera white balance setting to custom (the one which looks a bit like >.<) will mean that your subsequent JPEG shots will not have the orange cast.

Alternatively - as others have said, shoot RAW and adjust the white balance settings in post processing. It's handy to have a reference image shot with something white (like a sheet of A4) so you can check to see if you have got your correction right.
 
My wife is pregnant and I have been taking the same shot through her pregnancy.













Lighting pretty simple - softbox camera left and reflector camera right. You could replace the flash/softbox with a bright window...
 
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