5D Mk IV – EF24-70mm f/2.8L II – Speedlight 580EX II – 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 50

Today was a difficult shoot. In more ways than one. At first I was going to take a photo of a bunch of bananas (don’t say anything – I know). I had that shoot going but was having difficulty with the light – too bright, too dark, too many shadows, etc. I did it on white because I felt I had too many pics on black. However, this was more of a product type shoot and I don’t have a product photography box (maybe something to build using my wood skills). In any case, I took a few dozen photos of those when the battery in the camera died. So, I switched out batteries and was taking the dead battery upstairs to charge when I saw Mason sitting. I thought, hmmm…

So I popped in a fresh battery, threw on the Speedlight, and got an idea to take a phoot of his his reflection – kind of like mine in the ‘About’ page. I got a mirror set it on the ground next to him, but he decided it was a good time to move. He repositioned across the floor, so I moved over to him, set the mirror again and I took a pic. The pic was blurry because I had it on manual focus from the banana gig. I switched it to auto, took a pic but realized the batteries in the flash died. Aaaggghhh! I switched out those batteries and managed to get these two very quick shots, before Mason decided he’d had enough of being a model.

I hadn’t changed the aperture so the depth of field is less than I wanted. Another interesting tidbit is the flash is pointed straight up at the ceiling, it’s what’s called a ‘bounce’ flash. Some of you know my feelings of using on-camera flash pointed directly at the subject.

In any case, while not my best work, I kind of like how these pictures came out. Here, have a banana!