While weddings were a rare few each year, kids’ birthdays seem to pop up everywhere! 2011 has barely started, and we’ve already celebrated Maxime’s 2nd birthday on January 22nd, followed by Megan’s last Saturday.
These parties are a real challenge for photography. They’re usually indoors (especially in winter), with low lighting, and the kids are always darting around. On top of that, you’re expected to keep an eye on your own child too! Multitasking at its finest! 🎉📸
Canon EOS 5D MkII – EF 28-70mm – 1/200s f/2.8, ISO 3200 – Chiara enjoying Megan’s birthday, sometimes impressed so in observation mode, sometimes jumping around with others. It was happening in Gymboree Islington, an all-padded area with a dynamic entertainer. (Photos from Sab)
Since last Monday, Chiara has officially started walking—really walking this time! Now we’re constantly chasing her around, and it feels like a whole new adventure for us.
(If you’re wondering why we mostly share photos of Chiara, even at other kids’ birthdays, it’s simple: we do take pictures of other children, but we prefer to let their parents decide how to manage their kids’ online presence. Unless they’re family or close friends, we usually won’t post them here)
Canon EOS 5D MkII – EF 28-70mm – 1/400s f/2.8, ISO 2500 – Chiara walking on the parachute, on her own. As all adults were around pulling edges to make waves, she eventually fell down but somehow managed to stay up longer than I imagined.
Canon EOS 5D MkII – EF 28-70mm – 1/160s f/2.8, ISO 3200 – Chiara playing inside a tube. As the whole picture was reddish (tube was coloured), the picture was de-saturated and over-exposed to keep it visually interesting.
Canon EOS 5D MkII – EF 28-70mm – 1/640s f/2.8, ISO 3200 – Birthday girl Megan blowing her candles with help from daddy and mummy. (Photo from Sab)
We forgot the flash, so most of the pictures had to be taken at f2.8 and ISO3200. While the 5D MkII handles low light pretty well, the white balance was way off in most shots. The photos turned out grainy and washed out in terms of color.
To make things trickier, some shots of the kids had brightly colored backgrounds, meaning the white balance needed individual tweaks. Faces often ended up lit by non-white light too. So, every picture in this post went through heavy color corrections and noise reduction to look decent!