Blanchard Family Portraits with On-Axis Fill

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a family portrait session for some very close friends of mine. We had a great time and got some good pictures. I wanted to try using a technique called on-axis fill where your fill light comes from the same line your camera is on. For yesterday's shoot, I used one SB800 to camera left shooting through a Lastolite diffuser for my main light and one other SB800 in my DIY Beauty Dish directly above me and the camera for my fill light. The key is to make sure the on-axis fill is only a fill light... not being a detriment to the key light you set up. So I set the fill light at 3 stops less than my main light which just brought in some detail without overpowering my key light. Here are some pictures of the setup courtesy of Ben Rogers:





I used that setup in two different places and was very pleased with how things turned out. In the second picture, you can see Randy holding a reflector, but it was not being used as a light source, just blocking the sun. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the session: