A Very Barbershop Christmas
Travis from Bellevue Barbershop asked if I would volunteer as the photographer for a photo-with-Santa event he was putting on. I’ve always kind of wanted to do silly work like this since it’s outside what I normally do, so I agreed.
I set up two lights: one with a soft box pointed directly at the bench to light the subjects, and another pointed at the ceiling on the other side to give the rest of the room a little bump in ambient illumination. I didn’t worry too much about composition since A) directing children I don’t know is out of my league, B) as a one-person operation, I didn’t have much time to do anything else beyond taking the photo and immediately processing it, and C) these were ultimately free photos.
Using the bench for Santa to sit on was a good idea because it was heavy enough to not move, allowing a simple tripod-mounted camera to free up my hands and generate a consistent look for all photos. I tethered straight to my laptop through Lightroom, setup up an auto-edit routine so every image would look the same after it was taken, and texted/Airdropped every image right after they were taken to the parents. The system was good enough for one person to manage, and I think I did a decent job overall.
We used the barbershop as the backdrop, naturally. I don’t want to post photos of people’s children, so the photo above is from the lighting and export test right before the first kids went up to get their photos taken.