Sheldon's "Mommy and Me" Shopping Session

During the holiday season I scheduled a shoot with one of my favorite models, Sheldon, and her daughter Adalyn.  I wanted to try doing a "Mommy and Me" shopping shoot.  The Waterfront has some nice Christmas decorations in their central square, so that would be a convenient place to shoot.

We had an unexpectedly bright sunny day for our shoot.  My go-to setup for shooting in sunlight is to shoot with the sun behind the subject and having a flash in the front to fill in the shadows on the face.  I've literally used some variation of this for 40 years.  The sun makes a nice hairlight/rimlight on the subject.  But sometimes a regular flash struggles in this situation to have enough power to fill in the shadows.  Fortunately I had my Godox AD200 super-flash along, with three times the power of a standard on-camera flash.  Plenty of power to fill in the shadows, even at a distance.

Sheldon is also a photographer, in addition to being a model.  I think this gives her an edge and helps our sessions to flow easily.  Adalyn, meanwhile, is perfecting her "Diva Model" impression (which is actually pretty easy for a 2-year old).