Christmas Card

Well, it was that time of the year again to try to come up with a new, fun Christmas card idea.  I got really good comments and reaction to our card last year, so I knew I needed to try to do something creative again this year for our family photo.

I've been thinking about what photo I wanted to try to get this year for the last several months, trying to come up with a great idea.  I had a few different options that I could choose from, that I thought I'd be able to pull off pretty well, but when it actually came down to the time to shoot, none of them felt right. I needed snow to pull off a couple of them and it hadn't snowed at all yet this year.  So, those two ideas were out.  I had another thought that I was working on one night when our actual card came to mind.  So, I sketched it out, showed it to my wife and got to work trying to set it up.

I had to move all of the furniture out of the way in the family room in order to get access to the center and highest point of our room.  I then had to move the Christmas tree and string up some extra lights from the ceiling, which wasn't a small task.

Finally, I had to get the camera and lights all set up to try to get the photo I wanted.  I took several test shots and it just wasn't coming out the way I wanted.  But, we decided to push through anyway and try to get the final photo.  

I got my son up above the tree the way I wanted, got Paige posed and shot, got the dog's photo, then finally myself.  After looking at all of the images on the computer afterwards, I wasn't happy with the way my wife was posed and my son was slightly out of focus, which bugged me too.  So, we decided that we'd try it again the next night.

After getting it all set back up again the next night, I made some tweaks to the camera settings to get better focus and lighting, and we got to work.  After getting all of the images this time and looking at them on the computer, I was much happier with this set.  

I pulled them all together in photoshop, adjusted as I needed and we had our Christmas picture for the year!

The editing really only took about an hour, which isn't too bad for me doing a 6 shot composite and making everything merge properly.

I've gotten good feedback on the photo so far this year and it's been a lot of fun to show off to everyone.  

I hope you like it.

Just for fun, here is last years picture too.

Let me know what you think.  

T.

Christmas Lights

Ever since we got our tree up, right after thanksgiving, I had images of taking these pictures of our son. Early in the Christmas season, we were shopping for some more diapers for Isaac when we came across these Santa diapers.  They were so cute and I knew that they would be perfect for these pictures as well.  My mother-in-law knitted a santa stocking cap for Isaac as well, so with the combination of the diapers and cap, we could get some pretty awesome pictures.

The week before Christmas, my office let out early on both Thursday and Friday, so I had some extra time at home before dinner to try to get these pictures set up and taken.  I moved some of our furniture out of the way to open up some space, moved the baby gate we had protecting the Christmas Tree and plugged in an extra strand of lights for Isaac to play with.

I knew as soon as we moved the gate out of the way, he would immediately go for the ornaments as he always tries to grab them over the gate.  So, we put a few down at his level and let him go for it.

I had the camera set up to expose the way I wanted, so as soon as he started going for the tree, all I had to do was click away.  As suspected, he went for the first ornament he could get his hands on and pulled it off of the tree.  Shortly after that, we gave him a Christmas cookie and let him eat that while he was playing with and looking at the other strand of lights that we put out for him.

All in all, the shoot took less than 10 minutes, but we got some pictures that I really liked and that I was really happy with.

For the ornament shot, I had to crank up my ISO to 2,000 and even at that, it was barely enough.  My shutter speed was still a little low at 1/50s, even at f/2.2.
For the other shots, I was able to increase my shutter speed because there was extra light available due to the extra strand of lights.  So, I was able to keep ISO at 2,000, run shutter speed up to 1/125 or 1/200 at f/2.2.

I was really happy with the way that they turned out and will definitely try to get another set of these next year.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Engagement Shots - Corey & Molly

I had an opportunity over the last two weekends to take some engagement pictures for some really good friends of mine.  They got engaged this summer and asked me if I'd do some engagement shots for them.
I happily took on the project, even though I've never really shot anything for other people before.  I immediately started searching the Internet trying to find ideas for engagement shots, poses, locations, etc that I could do with them. 

Normally, when I shoot, it is just of my wife or kid, so if I screw it up, I can always do it again the next day.  It's a little different when you're shooting for someone else, especially if there aren't many mutually convenient days to get together.  I was slightly less nervous for this shoot, since they were friends, because I knew if we didn't get them this week, I could do it another week.  But still, I wanted to try to get it done right the first time.

The first shoot was slightly impromptu because we decided to run out and get a few shots with the remaining light after my son's birthday party.  They came down for the party and as things were winding down, I noticed that we had some really good light outside.  We quickly drove over to a park that is close to our house and got this first set of pictures.

We really only had about 15 minutes before the sun dropped below the horizon and the light started to get really bad.  So, we tried to cram as many as we could into the short window before heading back home to hang out some more.

That night, we made plans to meet up again the following weekend and set aside an afternoon to try to get some more.

So, this last Sunday, I headed up to their town with the wife and baby in tow.  They have a big forest preserve close to their house, so that was the first location we hit up.  It has miles of walking paths, fields, trees and a lot of great areas to get some pictures.  I had a few pictures in mind that I really wanted to take.  Mostly involving sun flairs, back lighting and blown out highlights.  So, we went through a few fields that had tall prairie grass, weeds, and other various tall foliage to get some of the backlit shots.  We stopped by a few wood rail fences and tried to find other locations where the light was coming through the trees.

After getting a few shots I really liked at the forest preserve, we headed back into their town.  They have a nice little downtown area where I wanted to get some more pictures.  But, most of all, I wanted to get some shots at the train station and platform that run right through downtown.  So, after finding an area where there weren't too many people, I set up some gear and we got to work there as well.  After getting a few regular shots, a train pulled into the station.  An idea popped into my head that I really wanted to try.  I wanted to capture them standing on the platform with the train moving in the background.  I quickly tried one shot as the train was pulling away.  I looked at the screen on my camera, anticipating a great shot only to find out that I completely blew it.  The shot was completely overexposed and was just generally terrible.  Luckily, 5 minutes later, another train came through.  This time, I set up the camera, took a few test shots, got the settings the way I wanted and waited for the second train to start moving.  I got 2 shots off while the train was in motion and really liked the way they turned out.  The second picture I got right as the last car passed by, which exposed some of the town houses on the other side of the tracks, along with streaks of the train.
In hindsight, I would have sped up the shutter just a bit, so that you might be able to make out some of the train windows, but I still think those two shots were awesome.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Head Shots

Well, today, I started out intending to try a new picture style that I saw on-line on myself.  I wanted to get a simple head shot against a dark gray background.  It could either be turned black and white or left color.
I wanted just a single flash for the lighting from upper camera left to cast light across my face and feathered to light the background as well to give me some definition against a dark background.

Well, I tried a few shots, and trying to get a good self shot is pretty difficult for me, so after several attempts and not liking the way they looked, I decided to try it out on my son.

Kids are a lot of fun to shoot because you aren't going to get the same expression twice in a row out of them.  They are constantly moving around, changing where they look and how they look.  It's fun to try to get several pictures in a row of them in order to compare all of their different expressions.

I really liked the way that several of his pictures turned out so I decided to process them all separately, then put them together in a collage.
I decided to change them to B&W rather than color, just because I liked the way the B&W looked a little better.  The color ones are still great, but I like how the B&W just kind of flows through the entire collage.

I really wish that I could find a frame to match this collage because I would really like to print it out, but I'm not sure there are any standard 6"x20" frames.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll print it and just tape it to the wall, ha.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Pumpkin Patch & Apple Orchard

This last weekend, we had the opportunity to get out of town (way out of town) to go visit an apple orchard and pumpkin patch.  When I heard we were going to the apple orchard, I had visions in my head of walking down rows of apple trees, picking apples in a basket and buying a bunch of them.  This wasn't quite the case.  The farm this took place on was a functioning apple orchard, but they didn't allow you to walk through the trees.  They harvested the apples themselves, then made apple donuts, pie, cider, etc for you to purchase at the main building / store.

They also had a small pumpkin patch where you could buy a pumpkin.  One other thing they had that I wasn't expecting was a petting zoo.  I say 'zoo' pretty lightly, in the sense that they had a goat, donkey and small horse.  There might have been a couple other animals too, but that was pretty much it.  They had a small hay maze and were giving wagon rides every so often as well.  We didn't do the wagon, but Isaac did walk through the maze all on his own.

But, then again, we weren't really there for ourselves.  Granted, the apple donuts were AWESOME and the hot cider was really good too.  We really went there to take Isaac and let him play around with the pumpkins.  I thought I was going to get some sweet pictures of him picking apples off of the tree while Paige held him up, but no such luck.  Instead, we got some nice pictures of him playing with the pumpkins, looking at the animals and pretty much just walking around the entire farm.  It was a lot of fun watching him walk around so much and really have fun playing in the different areas.

We went with my wife's family and it was a lot of fun.  Granted, it took us about 1.5 ours, round trip, to drive and we really only spent about 45 min to an hour actually there, but it was totally worth it.  It was really a lot of fun watching Isaac walk around and really take in all of the new things that he hadn't had the opportunity to see yet.

Here are a few pictures that I got along the way.  They're not really touched up at all.  I really just wanted to get some regular pictures of him for once :-).

Let me know what you think.

T.

Anniversary Photo

This last week was our 2nd wedding anniversary.  It's hard to believe that it has already been two years, and even harder to believe that we almost have a 1 year old baby boy.

I wanted to start a little tradition with our family to try to get a photo every year on our anniversary.  We  got one pretty close to our first anniversary (not quite right on the date), which was shot during the 'Belly Sunset' photo earlier in this blog.  I have another photo that we are in together, shot at the same time, just not uploaded on here.

Since the first non-official anniversary photo had a 'pre-Isaac' in it, I thought that this years photo should have him actually in it.  We have been so blessed to have such a wonderful little guy that I thought I would include him in the photo too.  Plus, since our lives are not very much about us any more and more about him, we thought we should make him the center of the photo...actually, since you can't even see our faces, he's pretty much the entire thing.

I had the idea for this photo that I wanted to take on a gritty background and originally, it was just going to be me and him.  I was going to be standing a couple of feet away from him, have him looking up at me and you still only would be able to see from my chest down, as in this photo.  But, I decided to incorporate my wife into the picture, since it was our anniversary and all.

Again, originally, I wanted Isaac to be looking up at me (or Paige with both of us in the picture), but since the self timer light on the camera was blinking, that kept catching Isaac's attention.  I really liked the way the photos turned out with him looking at the camera.  We did catch a couple of him looking up at us, but he has to turn his head so high to see us, you can't really see his face at all.
I also really liked him standing there, just holding on to Paige's leg with one hand.  He still looks a little grown up, but maintains his innocence by needing to hold on to mommy.

In post processing, I darkened, increased the contrast and increased the grit of the bricks a little bit to make them look a little more harsh, and really only tweaked colors a little bit on us to make us pop against the bricks a little bit.

I really liked the way that it turned out and absolutely love his expression...such a cute little kid.

Let me know what you think. 

T.

Bath Time

So, a few weeks ago, I really wanted to get a photo of my son playing in the bath tub.  I had an idea for a picture that I wanted to take where you could barely see the top of his head popping up over the side of the tub with some bubbles on top of his head.

So, to start with the image I had in my head, I needed to run a bubble bath for the little guy.  I got the tub filled up (just a few inches) and fluffed it up nice with some baby bubbles.  I threw a few toys in the tub to keep him occupied while I could try to get a picture of the top half of his head.

So, while he was sitting in the tub, I got the camera set up and tried out a few shots...It took me a few attempts to dial in the flash I needed, then I set about trying to get the image I wanted.

It took several attempts to get a good one because he kept moving around so much.  He doesn't hardly ever sit still, let alone when he's playing in the tub.  He kept trying to stand up, throw toys over the side, splash in the water, etc.   After one of his several attempts to stand up, he slipped, ended up on his hands and knees, then just popped the top of his head over the side of the tub and looked at me.  I snapped a picture just at the right time and knew that I had one that I really liked.  It wasn't the picture that I originally had in my mind, but I ended up liking it even more.

It was fun trying to get pictures of him playing and I think that I got one that we'll really like for a long time.

Let me know what you think.

T.

Bubbles!

For the last couple of weeks I've been wanting to get a picture of our little guy playing with some bubbles.  All that we could find around the house were the small bubbles that you get at someone's wedding, but I wanted the bigger bubbles that you might blow in the back yard.  So, while my wife was out running an errand, I had her pick up a bottle and bring them home.

We went downstairs to my makeshift home studio and got to work shooting.  My wife stood over the baby, blowing bubbles as fast as she could to try to get as many in the air at the same time and to give him more bubbles to play with.  While he was reaching for the bubbles, simply watching them or just sitting there, I was snapping away, trying to catch a fun expression.

With this first photo, I was really fortunate to catch him, actually looking at me, with a bubble directly in front of his right eye.  It was a really unique capture and made me smile when I first saw it.

Isaac really enjoyed playing with the bubbles.  He would reach and try to catch them, or would try to grab the ones that were already on the ground.  It was the first time that we've really blown bubbles around him, so it was a lot of fun to see how he reacted.

This time, I used a slightly different set up for my 'studio'.  I have some flooring left over from what we used in our old house, so I thought I would set some of it up for him to sit on, rather than our damaged, old, dirty wood floors.  I then hung a black sheet on the wall behind him to use as a backdrop and got to work.

If you can't tell from the photo, I shot this using a 3 light set up.  It could have just as easily been done using only 1 light, but I like the little bit of extra separation that the 2nd and 3rd lights give you from the background.

My main light is set up in a 24" softbox camera right, about 5 feet high.  The other two lights were fired bare both camera right and left, slightly behind the baby.

I adjusted the levels in Lightroom 3 and Photoshop to get the background black, then tweaked a few other things to get it looking exactly the way I wanted.

I was really happy with the way it turned out and will add more pictures as I edit the other ones as well.

Edit:

Here are a few of the other pictures that I edited.

I also put together a little collage so I could print it out in an 8x10 frame.  

Let me know what you think. 

T.

Crib Floating

I haven't taken a picture of the little guy in a while, so after dinner tonight, right before bedtime, we decided to try to get a fun one of him.

If you've looked through this blog at all, you'll see that I've taken a few of these types of pictures before, so I really wanted to try to get another one with him.

It was pretty easy getting all of the lights set up and the room situated as we wanted, so snapping the picture was pretty easy to do.

He loves being tossed around, so this really wasn't a difficult picture to get.  It was a lot of fun and I really like the way it turned out.

It only took a couple of minutes to get the picture and then get him right to bed.

Let me know what you think. 

T.

Messy Food Face

This last Saturday I got to watch our baby boy by myself for most of the day.  I work while my wife stays home with the little guy, so she usually handles most of the baby 'chores' each day (feeding, napping, bathing, repeat).  He's usually finished dinner by the time I get home, so I get the last bottle of the day before putting him to bed.  So, it was nice and a lot of fun hanging out with the little guy all day, getting to take part in his daily routine and just spend some good daddy/son time.

Around lunch time, I got his food out, put him in his high chair and went about feeding him.  He's not exactly the most focused eater on the planet, so if there is anything even remotely interesting going on around the house or outside, he's looking around.  He also really likes banging his hands on the table, which makes it difficulty getting a spoon in his mouth without having it knocked out of your hand all over the place.

So, needless to say, after his meals, he's usually pretty messy.  Between grabbing food with his hands, moving his head right before food insertion and not being able to keep all of the food in his mouth, we've usually got some good cleanup to do.

But, today, rather than cleaning him up immediately, I decided to get a picture of him.  We always try to capture fun, creative, 'clean' images of him, so I thought it would be really nice and fun to have a good messy picture.  Food all over his face and smiling.  I loved the picture and think that it will be a great memory to have.

It just makes me smile every time I look at this picture.  I can hear his laugh and feel his happiness.

Let me know what you think.

T.

52/52 - Sunset Silhouette

With the hot, dry weather we've been having lately, it has made for some really nice sunsets.  Without having to worry about clouds blocking the sun or gloomy weather ruining the evening hours, we have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time out back catching the sunsets.

This time, we decided to make use of an overgrown field to try to get some nice pictures of Paige and the baby against the setting sun.

I wanted to try one picture with a blown out sky and then try to get a good silhouette picture of her playing with him.  Since it was close to his bed time, we didn't have much time to get the shot taken, so we got to work quickly.

I had Paige walk about 15 feet out into the over grown field behind her parents' house and start tossing the baby up in the air.  He loves being tossed and always starts laughing when we do it.

I had my aperture set to where I wanted it, got focus locked in, then went about changing the shutter speed to get the exposure I wanted.  It's a pretty easy process and only takes a few rotations of the shutter speed dial to get both the overexposed background or under exposed foreground.

All in all, it took us about 5 minutes from the time we walked out the door...easy peasy.

I really like the way they turned out.  The underexposed picture looks like it's slightly desaturated, and sort of monotoned, but I didn't set out to make it that way...it's just kind of the way it turned out.  I think it looks pretty cool.

Let me know what you think.

T.

51/52 - Corny Sunset

This last weekend, we were out on the west side of the far west suburbs visiting some friends.  Their back yard butts right up to the adjacent corn field.  Right now, the corn is just low enough that you can still see over it and that evening, we were treated to a really nice sunset.
So, I grabbed my camera (I was planning on taking some maternity pictures that night instead) and headed out to try to capture a good shot or two.

I snapped away for a few minutes as the sun continued to go down.  I thought about trying to do an HDR shot, but didn't like the way the multiple exposures turned out, so I figured I'd just try pulling a good image out of this one.  This was my favorite shot of the set since you could still see the detail in the corn, but could also make out some of the colors of the sunset.  The only thing that could have made it better is if I could have found an old barn to try to get in the shot as well.

We never did end up getting any maternity pictures, but at least I got one good shot out of the trip!

Let me know what you think.

T.