Firelit family portrait with a little flash

Group family shots don't have to be boring. Here's a fun example of my sis and family hanging out in their backyard on a summer evening.

Fire is always fun to shoot, so I jumped at the chance to get some shots when my sister lit up the fire pit and busted out the skewers. (I also enjoy marshmallows on occasion!)


For the shot, I knew I wanted to blur the flames a bit and keep it in the foreground. Right away, that meant I needed a tripod and a wide angle lens.

I also new the evening light was going to continue to fade and letting the fire light the people would result in too warm of color temperature. I set up a flash (camera left) to supplement this warm ambient light and give some proper skin tones and more natural color balance to the image.

The flash also helped in freezing my subjects during the somewhat long shutter speeds.

Gear Specs: Nikon D300 / 17-55mm 2.8 lens / SB800 in iTTL mode / Manfrotto tripod with ballhead.

Exposure: ISO 400 / F 7.1 /  1/2 second

As always, click any image for the larger version. TR