Photo Shoot Highlights

I have taken lots of family photos and some individuals' photos over the past several weeks.  But rather than blog about each session, I've pulled out some of my favorites, along with lessons learned from each shoot.  Here goes!




Carrie's Individual Shoot:  my lens' auto-focus was malfunctioning, so there were only a handful of images with sharp focus, but this was one of them.  I love these windows, in the stairwell of my church.  Learning opportunities: always carry a second lens, should the first have some terrible issue like no-ability-to-focus!  Also, wider angle lens (18-35 mm) is better for full length portraits.  I love how bright and clean this image (above) feels.



The Culbriths Family Photo:  Learning points -- if you set the time of the shoot for sunrise, you should take into account whether that's sunrise before daylight savings kicks in or after. The sun was so high that many of my field photos came out with too much haze and harsh sunlight.  This one was good, but many, many others were unusable.



The haze in this one isn't bad, but I think I would like it better with less haze.  They were seated in the shade of the fence, and the sun was just rising over the fence.  If I could do this one again, I would get the sun behind me and still shoot them in the shade.  That would make the husband's features sharper.  Beautiful family though.



Learning points from this set-up:  a wider-angle lens (18-35mm) would have been better in this tight situation.  I would have liked to get more of the bed in these shots. 



Ford and Katie:  This shoot was meant to capture Katie's last moments with her only child Ford before his baby sister arrives on the scene.  Besides having a dead car battery and needing to wait for a jump before making it to the park (thus... the sun was already much higher in the sky than when I had planned these photos), I like how these came out.  I did a lot of them back-lit, since the sun was already above the horizon.  I greened up the grass and warmed up the white balance in PSE so it wouldn't look so wintery.  I love this one.



Nikkie's Family Shoot:  This session was totally last-minute, so I didn't have much time to think it through.  I had unrealistic expectations about getting baby to smile, which she wouldn't.  So that made it a rather stressful hour or so.  Also it was 4 PM on a bright, sunny day... and I couldn't come up with any really nice backgrounds or shady spots outside to photograph them in.  So... learning moment here is to plan photo shoots at sun down or else adjust expectations accordingly. 



Natalie's Family Shoot:  This went so much better than expected.  Right at sun down at a park with a big tree line - the lighting was easy peasy.  Having learned some lessons from previous family shoots, I brought a basket full of toys and threw a ball to Esra between each picture.  That kept him looking at me and smiling in anticipation of the ball.  Learning moment : tell Dad to put his foot down.  Wouldn't change anything else about it, though.



Remember how baby Shepherd would not sleep last time I tried to photograph him?  Well, check this out - despite the cool breeze, he was out like a light, and I managed to get (albeit clothed) a few sleepy shots of him on his blanket.  Score!



Maybe a teensy bit out of focus, but otherwise I love this photo with the soft sun light hitting her hair and the top of his head.



Baby Cora is 3 months old (I photo-shopped mom's hand out of the above photo) and not a big tummy-timer.  I keep encountering this problem, it feels like.  Note to self: don't use white bunny ears on a white background.



It was super overcast and dark outside on this day, and I really didn't have enough light to shoot without flash.  I ended up bouncing my speedlight all over the place and changing my settings every few minutes.  Learning moment: learn how to use your flash (I'm currently taking a course).

Hannah's Recital:  Oh gosh.  Where to begin.  This was a huge, dark room with very harsh overhead lighting directly above Hannah.  Between that and the super dark wood walls and super light wood floor, it was really challenging to photograph in this room.  I should have used my flash but was afraid to fire it directly at Hannah and had nothing to bounce it off of.  So I took all my photos without the flash and then attempted to edit some of the harsh shadows out of them.  Those are particularly apparent on some of the images of her playing (above).



Although my original intention was to get bright, clean, airy images -- I do love the drama in the one above and several others.  It actually captures the feel of the room nicely.

So that's some of what I've been learning and doing these past several weeks!