Lights!

I've been collecting camera toys for awhile, I save up birthday money & the like and every once in awhile I get something new. I've been wanting a studio lighting kit for awhile but anything half decent is around a grand. Or so I thought! When Rick & Nancy were here, she brought out this mysterious long rectangular case that her Uncle Gerald had. Guess what's in it?!?!?!? LIGHTS!!!!!!!!!! As she told me, very bright lights! How exciting is that???? Ok, more so for me I guess but hooray!!! It takes up to 4 sortof floodlight type bulbs and has a little stand to prop it up on or you can attach a handle to hold it in your free hand (or I think that's what it's for, I'll have to play some more & figure all this out). I use the living room often when I'm doing portraits & the window light is great when they're facing that direction & camera right always looks ok because the light can bounce back off the white walls. Camera left is always a bit shadowed so I've been toying with the idea of looking for a reflector but now I have lights that can fill that gap!

The girls wanted pictures with their animals after supper & since it was still light out, the living room was fine but I knew I could use a little fill light on that shadow side & ta da! I plugged in my new lights. This is just my first attempt and I still need to learn to adjust my settings more to compensate for this newfound wealth of brightness so bear with me. These are a little overexposed but not a bad beginning!

The girls also wanted to each take pictures of their own & here are there chosen subjects.

Honey wanted a picture of Toosfairy:

Sweetie chose Bunny & Beige Bunny (Bunny originally was the same as Beige Bunny except for colour, poor BB is sooooooo unloved!)

Lovey, in the ultimate suck up move, picked me!

I'm not sure what was wrong with my face here. It was all red & blotchy in the picture, then I tried to fix it a little in photoshop & then gave up. Despite appearances, I didn't cry all day & then get a beating. Honest.