So just recently I had a 1st birthday party/family photo session at an indoor waterpark called the Great Wolf Lodge. There was a pretty big language barrier between the mother, who set the thing up, and I, so I really had very little idea what I was getting myself into. Despite that, we had managed to communicate well enough that I got myself to the right place, on the right day, and at the right time.
It was fun, but the level of difficulty was quite high on this particular shoot. When I got there and met up with the family, they first wanted to do a bunch of family portraits in and around the park. The family consisted of the Mother and Father and their three boys aged 11, 6, and 1. Family portraits with 1 year olds aren't so easy. We ended up spending most of the time trying to get him to look in my direction and it seemed that every time he did so, the one pointing in my direction was looking at him. Basically, I had to take tons of shots in hopes that one had everyone looking at me. Not only that, but the place was packed, so I had to constantly contend with passersby wanting to... pass by. Then there were the people trying to help, but they themselves tended to get in the way. There was even a staff member that stopped us all to take pictures of the family with her cellphone. The party had a Mario Bros. theme to it and she absolutely loved the costumes and absolutely had to send the picture off to someone or other. Don't worry dear reader, you'll get to see the costumes as well...
This park also doubled as a hotel and in order to stay at the park you have to book a room. The room is where the birthday party was. This basically meant that I had two things going against me. Those being, lack of space and lack of good natural light. There was thankfully a decent sized window on one side of the room and my goal was to milk as much of that nice ambient light as I could. The space that was lit up by this light was very small, however, and the room itself was quite crammed up by the six of us.
Thankfully, I had just purchased a nice wide-angle prime lens, which I used for most of the shoot. It not only had the width to shoot in such cramped quarters, but it also had the low-light ability to handle the... low light.
Once we were in the room and got some more family portraits out of the way, I was able to start shooting in the documentary style that I was comfortable with and I ended up very pleased with the results. The ambient light I was referring to really helped me get some good shots as it lit up the subject(s) while the background remained dark. It was just a matter of being patient and waiting for the right moments. Here are some of my favorites from this session:
