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Rangefinder Magazine
October 2003

Rƒ Cookbook by William S. McIntosh
The Environmental Family Portrait

The portraits that bring in the most profit for my portrait sessions today are family groups. Up until about 1970 most of my groups were made in the studio. Although I still offer studio portraits, most group sessions are either outdoors or in the home.

I began making family portraits in gardens and on the Atlantic oceanfront in 1964. I offered them as wall-size portraits mounted on canvas to be sold as premium, custom-made portraits. In the 60s, color negative film was slow and a far cry from the quality of film today. To get good quality backlighted portraits or portraits made just before the sun went down, you had to use blue flashbulbs to supplement the light, or else the shadows would turn blue. Most battery-powered strobes were not powerful enough and those that were did not recycle very fast.

I made these types of portraits to create a new market for my studio. I kept them on display continuously. It still took five or six years before the customers began to see their value. It was the early 1980s before the environmental portraits began to overtake the volume studio portraits. Today about 60 percent of all my portrait business is of family groups made outdoors. My technique is very much the same as it was in the 60s, except the film today is far superior and so are the battery-powered strobes and cameras.

Fine portraits can be made outdoors in the shade when you can find the right scenery and conditions. Fine portraits can also be made using reflectors to fill in the faces of your subjects. It takes a big reflector to cover a group of six or so, plus a slight wind makes it hard to handle.

Equally, fine portraits can be made right after the sun comes up and just before it goes down.
I prefer to use a barebulb strobe to fill in backlit subjects or to add a little punch to sunlit subjects when the sun is very low, early in the morning or at sunset.

No matter how good your artistic and photographic skills are, there is one more element required to make a great group family portrait—color harmony. Time is well spent before the sitting discussing the style of clothing—formal or casual—and then advising clients of particular colors which they feel happy with and which will also create a harmonious portrait.

Family Dressed in White on the Oceanfront
The sky on the oceanfront after the sun has just gone down is very dramatic. The light on the family however is frequently flat and lacks contrast. I use a Lumedyne barebulb strobe to make the people stand out. The exposure for the sky is 1/30 at f/8. I set the strobe for f/8 and the shutter for 1/60 second, thus underexposing the sky by one f-stop to make it deeper and more dramatic.

Family on Fence with Roses
The garden family portrait was taken with the last rays of the sun behind them. You can see the light on their hair. The exposure of the ambient light was 1/30 at f/8. I set the strobe at an f/8 output and the shutter speed at 1/30, thus matching the daylight exposure. This gave a good lighting pattern to their faces and added catch lights to their eyes. Without the strobe their faces would be in the shade and their eyes would be lifeless.