A Tale of Three Birthdays

We were at San Bernardino last weekend for the birthdays of Ashley, Haley and Charisse.  It's always a fun time at the Contreras residence, and this was no exception!  Got a bounce house full of kids, a plethora of barbecued goodies on the grill, the celebrants and their cousins displaying their singing skills, and friends and family members in attendance to complete the celebration.  Effective ingredients for a great time!

Taking photos inside the bounce house was fairly tricky...aside from the constant bouncing and shifting inside, the lighting was either blown out backgrounds or just shadows inside.  I was able to snap this shot by crawling inside and bouncing flash over my left shoulder into the ceiling....this caused a bit of a mix of green and red cast on the kids, but since I shoot in raw, I was able to correct the color to make it acceptable....

These next shots are of the girls giving due diligence of putting out the fire hazards on their cakes :)

 

 

 

I switched lenses to a longer tele to get a closer shot, only to realize I was too close :(

Charisse's arm was just a few inches behind Ashley, and that was the sweet spot.  This is when my distaste of cropping in post production definitely got the best of me.   

 Above and below are Chinky, Marina and her daughter Jaimee and Carol.  Classmates from Saint Paul's QC batch 88.  This was taken with the sun pretty high and bright...for fill in flash, I had a Sunpak 333 firing remotely just to the right.  Just enough to lift those shadows :)

 

 

That's Haley (above) right as she was opening her gifts.  Precious!

 

Charisse all smiles after she got a SB 600 for her Nikon.

You can feel Ashley's excitement here as she started opening her presents! 

These three images of the girls above were shot in a gazebo tent in the backyard past sunset.  I had a 550 EX firing remotely into a corner of the canvas roof to give a soft, bounced light.  Ambient light was a bit too low to be the only source of light at this point, (and I don't like pushing my ISO when I can still have other means of getting a good exposure) but there was still enough surfaces around us to create soft light.

 

Jerome and Ana earlier in the day.  They are actually laughing at me thinking why the heck I had the flash pointing directly away from them when I took this...  I had to convince them that I meant to do that, but I don't think they believed me anyway.

These next images don't do much justice to the singing these girls demonstrated during the party.  The girls started off by a dance routine then capped it off by singing a few of their fav songs from Glee.

Pretty awesome stuff!

Techie Notes:  A few of the shots here here taken with flash and a few were taken with ambient light only.   Which ones were which?  There's a few give aways that reveal which is which, but nothing too obvious.  No harsh shadows and hot spots.  That's the whole idea of the style of photography I shoot with. 
Gear used: 5D, 24-70, 70-200, 550EX, Sunpak 330, Cowboy Studio radio slaves.