50/52 - More Baby Pics

Since I've got my own in-house models, I figured I'd put them to use again this last weekend.

We shot some maternity pictures for a friend on Saturday and on Sunday, surprisingly, my wife asked if I wanted to shoot some more pictures of us and our son.  It's not too often that she actually asks me to shoot pictures of her, so I jumped at the chance!

It was mid-day on Sunday, so I knew if we shot outside, we needed to be in the shade.  We've got a porch on the side of our garage that actually provides some pretty good light for being completely covered.

So, she and our son went and sat on the swing and we got to shooting.  I got a few cute pictures of him sitting on her lap and playing around on the swing, but the 'magic' really started when I walked behind them and shot from the back.

Our son turned around to look at me and I immediately knew I wanted to try to get some close up pictures of his eyes and face.  He has beautiful blue eyes, much like my wife, and I really wanted to emphasize that.  With him looking up at me, the sky really lit up his eyes.  I was able to make enough funny faces for him to smile at me a few times, but I really like the ones where he's just kind of looking off into space.

Then, my wife really wanted to take a picture that she saw on Pinterest (a recurring theme) of us kissing and just holding the baby out towards the camera.  This one was slightly more difficult since we didn't have someone else there to get focus set and actually take the picture.  So, I had my wife hold the baby where we though he would be, I set focus, then using the timer, clicked the shutter and hopped in the picture.  After several pictures, we realized that the very first one I took was actually the best, so we called it quits...they baby was starting to wear out at that point, so it was best to just stop.

I was really happy with the way they turned out and think that we got some very sweet pictures of both Isaac and my wife.

Let me know what you think.

T.

49/52 - Maternity Shoot

Well, I finally shot my first 'hired' photo session.  Granted, hired is a very loose term in that they are very good friends of mine, I didn't get paid and I'm not selling them anything.

I'm not really all that keen on hiring myself out just because I do this for fun.  I don't plan on making this a business and don't really expect much money to come from my hobby.  Also, I take a long time shooting my pictures...I set up, shoot, change, shoot, change again, shoot more, until I feel like I've got what I want.  So, this little shoot, which really netted about 10 pictures took about 2.5 hours, just because I'm not very efficient with what I'm shooting.  I don't have a set schedule when I shoot and don't know exactly what I want before going into the shoot, so it takes more time.  I had an idea of several pictures I wanted to take, which we did, but then we just spent time sitting outside, shooting whatever we felt like taking.

I know most photographers have about a half hour to hour window to get everything they want, but I'm not convinced I can do that just yet and really get the photos right.  So, until I get to that point, I'll just keep doing it for fun.

The mother-to-be in this shoot really liked some of the pictures that I got of my wife when she was pregnant and wanted me to try to get some of her as well.  I explained that I had 9 months to figure out what pictures to take, so trying to get several of her in one afternoon might be a stretch, but we went with it.
I think that we got a lot of good pictures and am really happy with a few of them.  I was a little disappointed, after looking at the pictures on my computer, that several of them are kind of 'soft' and not focused properly, but we've still got a couple months left before she delivers and maybe we can get in another shoot at some point.

Let me know what you think.

T.

48/52 - Stuffed Animals

Tonight we wanted to try to get a couple of pictures of our little boy with his stuffed animals.  We wanted it to look like he was sitting there talking with them all and wanted to get a cute picture of his little butt, so we had him facing away from us...kind of like we were catching a secret moment of him playing with the animals.

We didn't realize that the air vent was really distracting until after we shot a bunch of pictures and put them on the computer.  I guess we can do it again at some point on a different wall, but for now I really like the colors and the way it turned out.

Let me know what you think.

T.

47/52 - Sitting on the couch

I found a picture similar to this when looking around on-line and really wanted to try to recreate it.  As with most of my ideas, I use a lot of internet to try to come up with inspiration for new photos...500px, Pinterest, Flickr and a slew of other websites.  But, I think that 500px and Pinterest are by far my two most used.

So, on Mother's Day morning, after eating a delicious breakfast of Chocolate Chip Pancakes, we set our baby down and got to shooting.  I really like the big windows that we have in our family room and we just got a brand new couch that I thought would look great in B&W.  So, we pushed the couch against the windows and started shooting.

I think that it came out really well!

Let me know what you think.

T.

46/52 - Night Bike

We went over to a friends house this evening to hang out for a little while.  I have been wanting to get a picture of him with his bike for a while now, but hadn't ever been able to pull it off.  I didn't think it would happen tonight either since it had been raining all day and was only about 50 degrees out.
About an hour after we got there it finally stopped raining and really warmed up.  My buddy's wife is into photography as well and we typically talk shop when we come over.  Since it was nice out now, I asked her if they wanted to go out and try a multi-light night photo.
They live on a brick street, which I really wanted to incorporate in the photo.  So, since it was night time, I had them pull the bike out into the middle of the street so I could use the bricks and run a long shutter to bring in the street lights and whatever ambient was still left.
So, he moved it the bike out to the street, I got all the lights set up and we tried several different poses with each of them individually on the bike then both together.
It was a lot of fun trying to get this photo and I really liked the way that it turned out.

Update:
I fixed some of the purple color shift that you can see in the reflection of the flash.  I think that it looks better.

T

45/52 - Hanging on mommy

A picture my wife wanted to get with the baby.  She saw this photo on Pinterest and really liked it, so we tried to do our own recreation at home.
I think that it's just a sweet picture of she and the baby hanging out together.

Let me know what you think.

T.

44/52 - Flying!

I've wanted to take this picture of my son for a long time now.  Ever since I started barely bouncing him above my head, he would always laugh really hard and smile the entire time.  So, I've been waiting for him to get strong enough that I could really throw him above my head without him hurting himself.  He really loves doing this and just belly laughs the entire time.  It is such a fun sound and really fun for me to see him laugh and smile so much.
So, we set up a light, so that we could really freeze the motion, set the focus so that my wife could snap the picture with me tossing him.
I really like the way this one came out!

let me know what you think.

Here's a second one that I got during this same shoot!

T