This past weekend was an amazing weekend of great news and great ideas following along the lines of change for a new year.

Saturday morning was an earlier than normal wake up time for the weekend. I actually had to wake up my 8 year old daughter….instead of her waking me up first. While Jen and the kiddo got ready, I was in the kitchen drinking coffee and unloading and loading the dishwasher. I remembered we were going to Jen’s sister’s house after we finished up at the doctor’s office. Like a bolt of lightning (or maybe it was all the water splashing around the electrical sockets), an idea hit me! Jen’s nephews are just young enough still that they LOVE to dress up in costumes and act like they are Iron Man, Hulk, Batman, Captain America and so on. Not only do they love dressing up in the costumes, they dive 110% in to their chosen superhero’s character. Since all the lighting equipment was already in the Jeep, I knew what I had to do. I had to take pictures of them.

Once we got to the house, we told them the plan and made them start getting into character. Which is a very dangerous thing, because having an angry 2 year old Hulk in the house is a little bit scary. I went out front and quickly scouted the locations I was going to use and started building the different lighting set ups.

I knew I wanted to keep the background slightly underexposed for both of the below shots. I really wanted to make the boys separate and really pop from the background, so I went with a hard accent to create a hard halo of rim light and…POW! I devised a quick three light set-up. I quickly metered the ambient exposure and my desired exposure for all the action. I wasn’t worried about the ambient light too much…I was more worried about keeping the boys entertained….kids under the age of 6 have a very, very small attention span.

In a matter of ten to fifteen minutes, we were able to create the below images….and keep the boys entertained between their time in the light!

Thank you to Melanie and Josh for allowing me to work with your two boys!

“I am…the Batman…”

“Watch your potty mouth, son.”