nervy,help needed

i have been asked to do a shoot of the lady and baby in the picture below,great niece and great great niece,tips on the right type of back ground,colour patern ect,i just have basic equipment,eos-350d,a ad70-300mm f4-5.6 tele photo,and a efs 18-55,what settings which lens,i want them to be good as they are the first real photos to be done,

Beautiful children.

Not my area but I know someone will be along in a minute with good advice.

My suggestion would be a white bedsheet as a backdrop, get them far enough away from it and light it with flash. Then light the subject

A lens length of around 80-135 in 35mm terms for a good head and shoulders, so probably your 55mm to 90mm. be sure to get the eye nearst to the camera pin sharp and if you are using daylight use a reflector to lighten any shadows.
Try doing a little practice with a willing assistant to get it right before you shoot. In that way, once you know the best way, you will appear confident and then your subjects will relax and be confident too

thankyou daisy yes very pretty girls,,that is a picture i took at a bbq a couple of weeks back using the70-300,i just put a sky back ground in as what was there distracted the eye to much,i also have tripod and a daylight lamp no reflectors or back props as i normaly just do grasstrack racing,any comments on the above picture would be nice the sky was put in rather quickly

OK

Well, get the background right and you won't need to worry about changing it.

The pose can be difficult, If you dont have flash, outdoors might be best. Make sure the white sheet is well stretched (no wrinkles) Have the sun shining from behind so that it illuminates the sheet from behind and use a plain white reflector bouncing the sunlight back into their faces. That should give you a good starting point. Either use the longer lens at the shorter end of the shorter lens at the longer end, if you get my drift.

That should get you somewhere near the mark......

All the best

Dave

My advice would be is to get outside on a picnic blanket and in front of trees and greenery.

Get them dressed in similar colours for example both in jeans and one in dark blue tee shirt and one in light blue. [or pink or yellow but not green]

Hope that helps

i have a built in flash,sun light mmmmm on the back of house till about 9/30 then on the front at 5pm just going behind houses over the road,must admit we never though of summer sun when we chose this house,cheers for the help every one

OK, early start then, and the early light of day can be so nice!

Some good tips above

Don't forget to set your custom white balance too (see our photography guides if you need help with that). Good luck and let us know how you get on.

lots of help comming here,what about ISO normaly i use 1600 for grasstrack or one notch down as the speed of bikes,,,but hopefuly the baby wont be going that fast