Another quick post as I am swamped with processing work, which is a good problem to have.
Seats! You’ve seen me use stools and chairs and, in these photos, we are using an antique bench that came from an old fancy cruise ship. The “what” your subjects sit on is not as important as how you utilize it. Obviously, you can go for the main use and shoot straight on to the seat, but don’t discount other approaches, especially if you can move and adjust the seat. For example, we put the bench at an angle and worked from there. In fact, I meant to turn the bench around, so the back was facing the camera and have my subject look back, but I got sidetracked on the dogs.
On that note, two of my repeat reminders:
1) Be patient with pets on your photo session set. They don’t know what you are doing. They have no concept of what a camera or a photo is. They just want you to be happy and getting angry at them will just make them upset and you can pretty much just end your photo session at that point.
2) When working with younger children you can save a lot of processing time and touch up work if you remember to wash their face, especially if they have eaten recently.
Anyway, this was a two strobe light setup. Each light had an octagon softbox. I originally thought about having a back light, but I liked the way the background looked without a back light.