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.