Valentines Day Photos

Valentines Day is a great time for doing portraits, particularly at schools.

Many schools use Valentines Day as an opportunity to have a school dance fund raising event. They'll always want a photographer there to catch the moment for kids and their parents. When I work a school fundraiser I generally don't make a lot of money, but it's a great way to gain some new clients.

This year my setup was pretty much the same as what I did last VD at another school. Two soft boxes set up with a neutral gray background. I offered a few props to the kids if they wanted them i.e. heart shaped boxes, roses etc. All shot at 1/125 sec f10, 34mm or higher. I probably could have used my 50mm prime lens like I did last year, but wasn't sure about how much room I'd actually have to work with and wanted to limit my movement as much as possible. Getting the picture taken as quickly as possible is important especially if there's a line of people waiting.

For the post-processing I used Lightroom to adjust the exposure, white balance, then added the vignette in Photoshop. I also had to re-crop almost every picture...another disadvantage of not owning a camera with a full image sensor (Nikon D80). Below are some results: