Mother and toddler portrait (for a gift)

[JohnN]

Hi,

I've been asked to do a portrait shot of her and her son (three), which will end up as a gift for her husband.

Now the (hackneyed/classic/whatever) idea thats floating about in my head is is to go over to the local park (actually Clumber Park so theres a fair bit of nice backdrops) one morning and do something along the lines of her sitting next to her son - something like the image below, but I don't really want to drag along a shed load of stands, flashes etc as I don't really know how to use them, plus the National Trust will no doubt get upity (I used to work for them in another life) if they think I'm doing a comercial shoot without them getting their cut - and they are vigilant there!

So my plan is to take along the full frame, 50mm, 135mm (and my new OMD to have a play on the 60mm), plonk them in some shade with a nice blown out background - but the specifics are totally new to me and I'd like to get it right, so any tips on settings, defused fill flash etc would be greatly appreciated, especially as this is my first attempt at doing an actual portrait style shoot rather than just snapping the kids.

Something like this:

 

[Jayst84]

If you're not confident using flash, don't use it - you'll get better results without it.

Sit them in some open shade and fire away. (Depending on the weather) it's pretty straight forward photography wise. The hard part is getting them comfortable and looking good in front of the camera.

If you shoot from in the open looking into the shade, you'll (likely, depending on the area) get light on their faces, and an averagely or slightly under, exposed background. If you shoot from in the shade looking 'out' at them (who will still also be in the shade) then you can potentially blow out the background. That second one can be a bit harder to pull off.

 

[Phil V]

What he said.

 

[JohnN]

Cheers guys, sounds like it might be fairly simple.
I'll take along a reflector just in case and have a play with that too.
Hopefully it'll be a good learning experience.

 

[Serendipitous Sid]

For pictures like this, the quality of the result is usually inversely proportional to the amount of gear taken to the shoot.

Your rapport with the subject(s) is what really matters ...