How to Shoot a Picture-Perfect PortraitTodd Eller uses the Tamron SP 28-75mm f/2.8 lens to capture families, kids, babies — even household pets. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by Todd Eller |
For Florida photographer Todd Eller, a doctor’s warning was what pulled him away from sports and back to his first love: photography. “When I was a kid, my mother’s father had brought an old German mechanical black-and-white camera back from World War II; I started shooting when I was 8 years old,” he says. “In 2004, my orthopedic surgeon told me to quit playing football or quit walking. When I quit playing sports, it seemed natural for me to get back into photography full time.” |
Eller started out photographing sports, then moved on to work for the state of Florida, then to weddings. “After my wife and I started our family in 2004, though, the weddings got too crazy, so I started taking portraits,” he says. “My angle is to be as creative as I can be. People come to me, it’s because they’ve already been to the Sears and Walmart studios and they want something that’s a little different.” |
Being raised on a sprawling ranch in Texas prepared Eller for the heat and light of the Florida sun. “I’m an outdoorsy person — I hardly shoot anything indoors,” he says. “My mom used to own a sporting-goods store in Arkansas, so when she passed away, I inherited a lot of battery-operated fans to help keep everyone cool. Plus, especially with kids, I try to shoot in the early morning and late afternoon. Those times are better for my lighting anyway: Because I’m on the Tampa Bay side of Florida, the sun’s coming up at my back in the morning — the light comes up right over the back of the trees. I’ll back my clients just up into that light, which is awesome for about 45 minutes.” |
Eller relies on his Tamron SP 28-75mm f/2.8 lens for much of his portrait work. “I have another similar lens from another brand, and I never use it—I think I’ve used it twice,” he says. “It feels too heavy; the Tamron’s a lot lighter, it focuses so quickly, and it’s great in low lighting. For example, even though I mostly shoot portraits with it, I had a wedding in January that was completely candlelit — with that f/2.8 maximum aperture, I was able to use the lens for everything. I have two camera bodies, and they both have a 28-75mm lens on them for those reasons.” |
A Variety of Venues |
Eller is accustomed to shooting everywhere and anywhere, from inside a quirky catering hall to under a hurricane-saturated sky, to get the shots his clients want. When Eller was commissioned to shoot one of the occasional weddings he still does, for example, he knew it was going to be an unusual event from the start. “That wedding was unique — the entire theme was 1940s pinup-style,” he explains. “The place where they had it, the Orange Blossom, is this little itty-bitty place where politicians used to meet in the 1940s. Everything inside is antique. That’s why the bride wanted to have it there, for that vintage feel.” |
Because of the hot Florida sun and mirrored buildings that dominate the Floridian landscape, Eller was forced to deal with direct lighting for the outdoor shots (“it was 2pm and so bright outside — there was no way to diffuse that lighting at all”). But he was able to use those building reflections to his advantage later in the afternoon as it turned to early evening. |
“We were posing Dominique on the stairway of the front room,” Eller says. “That stairway goes up about 35 feet, and the cathedral ceilings are 25 feet up as well — it’s massive. The front window features a middle section that’s just like a regular window, but the top part is like a church window, with all different colors in it. When the sun went down, the light was bouncing off of the building across the street and right through that window — it just spotlighted the entire image.” Eller used an on-camera shoe-mount flash for fill flash and shot it at 31mm at f/2.8, 1/123rd of a second at ISO 1000. |
Heading outside, however, is more the norm for Eller — even during Florida’s infamous hurricane season. “I shot a family that’s German to the bone on the beach,” he says. “All of their family photos look like military portraits: They always stand straight up, arms straight down, palms to the side. They wanted something out of the ordinary, so I took them to the shore.” |
The evening they were shooting, however, right before sunset, turned out to be right before a major storm — so Eller had to move quickly. “At first, it took them a few seconds to relax,” he says. “They were doing all this static, supertense posing, the father especially. He had just gotten out of the military two years ago, so I had to go up behind him and shake his shoulders a little to loosen up.” |
As the storm clouds approached, Eller started clicking away. “The wind was blowing the mom’s and daughter’s hair,” he says. “You can see the rain in the background on the left side of the image — it was coming! Because it was so dark, I had my aperture cranked and put up two AlienBee 800s at full power to light up the area. I don’t like shadows from big strobes, so I had to kick it up a little to feather it in. I ended up shooting at 1/160th, f/11, ISO 400, with a +3 exposure, using the 28mm focal length. I had my iPad there and my wife was transferring the images as I shot them. The mother loved this shot — they ended up blowing it up to a 16x24.” |
Even pets are no problem for the veteran shooter. “I’ve been around animals my whole life,” Eller says. “So when we were doing a family portrait and this family wanted a shot of their two pugs, a mother and daughter, I went right ahead and did that.” |
Eller ran the pugs around a bit to dissipate some of their restlessness, then positioned them against a wall. “From the right side there was natural light, and my wife was standing with a flash and umbrella behind me to the left for fill,” he says. “I had a squeaky toy alligator, and when I squeezed it, they do what many dogs do when they hear a funny sound: They both cocked their heads in the same direction. I used that same alligator toy for the black German shepherd in the beach photo, but bigger dogs tend to sit up straight and perk their ears up.” Eller shot this image of the precocious pups at 1/60th of a second, f/5.6, ISO 400 at 75mm. |
Photographing His Youngest Subjects |
It’s babies and young children, however, who bring Eller the most joy when he’s photographing. “With babies, it’s more posed, but I don’t like just having them lie there with their arms spread out while they’re wearing a diaper,” he laughs. “I have a lot of stuff here that I like to incorporate into the images, but the parents, depending on their backgrounds, also bring their own materials and props. They just say: ‘Here’s the stuff we want you to use — do what you do.’” |
Being a father of two likely helps him establish rapport with his littlest posers — he just seems to have “the touch.” “I’m 6'4"; they call me a big bear,” he says. “I can hold a baby with one arm and the baby just passes out on me. If they wake up, often I can simply put my hand on their back, and they fall back asleep. The mothers all give me dirty looks and want to know if I can come home with them.” |
Eller uses constant lighting when he’s shooting indoors so as not to startle the babies. “I don’t use flashes, especially if the baby is calm, fed, and ready to take a nap,” he says. “For one little girl whose mother was in the Marine Corps, I had two lights set at 45 degrees to her at half power. That seemed to do the trick. The mom didn’t want the names on the dogtags to be visible, so I made sure those were a little blurred out. Instead, she wanted me to focus on the baby’s hair — the baby was only five days old and looked as if she had three months’ worth of hair! I shot this at 1/100th of a second, f/2.8, ISO 320, +1 exposure at 28mm.” |
His own infant son served as a willing model with a SeaWorld™ whale doll. “My older son likes the show ‘Whale Wars,’ so this seemed like a fun idea,” says Eller. “He’s lying on one of those foam mattress pads — I just put a white sheet over it, and he sunk right in. I was kind of worried about how the skin tones would come out. But the white sheet reflected the light onto his face a little bit. There was a little shadow under the whale, but it was OK. I shot this at 1/80th of a second, f/2.8, ISO 200, at 28mm. I turned the skull cap black in post-processing.” |
When babies evolve into toddlers, Eller is able to get a little more creative with his compositions. “For the little girl in the water I photographed, her mother lives about 25 feet from where the picture was taken — this kid was born in the water, lives in the water, and if you take her away from the water, she gets angry!” he says. “She had started walking about a week and a half before this picture was taken.” |
Eller placed about 20 rubber ducks floating in front of him in the water, outside of the camera’s view, and held his trusted squeaky alligator toy in his left hand above his head while maneuvering his camera with his right hand. “That’s how I got her to look up at me,” he says. “It was about 9am: I usually try to get the horizon a little lower, but if I had tilted my camera up even just a little higher, the sky was just too bright. It had rained pretty much for the past 10 days, so this was the first nice day we had had in some time. I shot this at 1/125th of a second, F/32, ISO 200, –1 exposure, at 31mm.” |
Eller’s favorite part about taking portraits of babies, kids, and families (and even the occasional pet): seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces when they view the images for the first time. “The family on the beach had 24 immediate family members in town, so I did a big family portrait that they ended up blowing up to 24x36,” he says. “They went out and bought a high-end African wormwood frame and hung it up in their home. When the great-grandmother saw the family photo, she started to cry, she was so happy. When I heard that, I thought, ‘I’ve done my job!’” |
To see more of Todd Eller’s work, go to Flickr Photostream. |