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.