Low key single flash portraits

One sort of photo I am currently working on is single flash, usually off camera and in a softbox or umbrella, low key or completely black background portraits.

I have and will move on to more lights later on.

Not sure what attracts me to these, but I most certainly am staying stuck here for a bit.

Here are a few recent favorites of my two sons, shot with the 85 1.4 on a D70:

 

Thanks for the compliments.

The BG on #1 was purposeful. It is a rocking chair I bought for him in a store I lived near when I was a child myself. I agree in general it distracts a bit.

Usually I use flat black curtains the wife found me at Target for the background.

These shots are with an SB800 mounted on a light stand, connected via the SC29 cord and fired into a small Photoflex softbox. I usually meter manually using a Sekonic L358.

 

I agree completely. If the chair is in the shot, put it in the shot!

Great shot of the little girl. The other sort of photos I take of my kids try to catch them doing the things they love the most. For example:

 

I use an SB800 mounted on a lightstand, behind a small softbox.

In the images above, the light is at camera left, a few feet higher than the subject's head, pointed at their shoulder or so. I tend to keep the flash as close as I can, which in both these cases was about 4 or 5 feet.

I use a light meter and the flash in manual mode to come up with the exposure, changing the flash's output until I get an f stop I like. I try to underexpose just a tiny bit, maybe a third of a stop.

The background in the second shot are just cheap flat black curtains under the subject and draped over a large chair behind him. So long as the flash isn't aimed directly at the backdrop, I can achieve a nearly totally black background.

This comes entirely from my own experiments and reading about lighting on DPR, etc. I am quite sure is purely amateur grade stuff.

A lot of it is coercing the subject to get poses I like. My older son is quite the ham, so it is rather easy. My 16 month old is another story. He doesn't cooperate so much as I just keep him busy until he does what I want.  

Here is another one from that session. He finally is starting to loosen up a bit and have fun in front of the camera for me.



And yet another I like. He had quieted down and was probably planning his escape from my clutches. The mark on his arm is not a bruise, by the way. That is a birth mark common in asian children.