Derella family portraits

I was pleased to be asked to take some family portraits for a work colleague of mine with his young son. Unfortunately rather inclement weather in New York the day of the shoot meant we were stuck indoors in their city apartment. Fortunately the master bedroom had buckets of natural light through a large window and its white walls & white linen provided a perfect studio environment for a portrait shoot.

I used my fantastic 50mm f1.8 lens on my Nikon D3 to maximise depth of field options and minimise the ISO I would need to use to compensate for the indoor light levels. I did use my flash but with a diffuser attached and directed towards the ceiling to give a boost to the ambient light levels and nice catch lights in their eyes, but without creating the harsh shadows that direct flash can generate.

Fortunately everyone was a perfect model, including young Dillon, as you can see from my favourite shot from the shoot above.

New corporate photos for Avinash Kaushik

I first met Avinash at Monaco Media Forum in 2008 when he was one of Google's speakers at this high profile media conference, sharing his views on website analytics and why he believed marketers were measuring the wrong things when looking at online advertising impact. He was one of the most inspirational speakers at the event that year and was besieged by potential clients after his short speech.

We kept in touch and when Avinash came across my photography website he asked if I could take some fresh portrait photographs of him next time I was visiting Google's Mountain View head office. In June I was in Mountain View for a few days to host a client event and I had brought my Nikon D3 camera with me, so we headed off for a walk around the Google campus to find some suitable locations to take photographs. The photo above is my favourite, although Avinash ended up using another one with a simpler background for his Twitter and other online profiles.