Firefly Photography: Aayden and Toni

I love the fact that I enjoy my work so much.
Not just seeing the final images, but the whole process of creating something beautiful for a client.
Getting a feel for their personalities, conceptualising the shoot, planning the lighting, deciding on props, setting the lighting, shooting, adapting, uploading and finally, loving what the whole process created.

I feel extremely blessed to have shot these two beautiful souls.
We had a great amount of fun, and Aayden's playful nature kept both her mom and me in stitches.

The shoot started out as a bit of a personal mission for me.
I believe strongly in having a standard, especially if you're charging people for the work you do.
Poorly lit, fuzzy images should never see the light of day, and should NEVER be paid for. (Yes, I know this is a personal rant)

Toni had received images of Aayden taken at her kindergarten by a photographer who had come in to shoot kid's portraits as part of a package deal.
As can be expected of a quick job, especially with children who don't always cooperate, the images did not capture Aayden's character, and just seemed to lack soul.

I don't like the idea of having anyone pay for work they aren't satisfied with.
There is something special about photographing kids - their personalities are ever changing, and I think it's a necessary thing to capture each stage of their lives, and capture it well. There is no way of turning back the clock and doing it a later stage.
But this also means that you do the job properly, and take the time to create an image (yes, it IS an active process that starts WAY before you lift a camera) that captures your subject as they truly are.

So, it was with this in mind that I offered to shoot pro bono to create something special for 2 very special people.
Now, I don't necessarily condone shooting for free, though not every reward needs to be financial.
My payback on this job was to spread my photographic philosophy on planning and approaching a client, and to garner some great word of mouth (Which truly is a priceless commodity)

The setup was a fairly simple one:
White seamless backdrop
White seratone floorboard
2 Background lights - metering a stop and a half hotter than the key light (Which creates the pure white background without flaring light on Toni and Aayden)
Key light - 90cm softbox
Camera - Canon 5D with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens, handheld

The shoot took all of 45 minutes, and yielded 49 "keepers" which I subsequently arranged into a video slideshow. (Which was a HUGE hit)

After delivering the images, I asked Toni to pick her top 6 images.
I was curious to see whether we'd have different points of view; me looking at the images from a photographer's perspective, and Toni viewing them very subjectively.

To be honest, I was expecting us to be pretty much similar with our picks - I could not have been more surprised.

Of six images, the two at the top of this post are the only images where our tastes coincided.

The 4 images below are Toni's other picks...