Daily Shots

I think that a lot of the time that I think about taking pictures, of my son, wife, friends, dog, whatever, I always think of them as 'staged' or 'posed' shots.  Even if some of them come off fairly candid or off the cuff, I always try to plan them out and have my subjects act like they are candid shots.
I rarely take my camera and try to capture truly candid shots, of my son playing, of my wife sitting around or of the puppy just laying on the couch.  I'm always trying to think of a way to pose them to get better light, to use flashes to try to manipulate or shape the light more...I never really just shoot.

I'm trying to make it a goal of mine to try to get more candid shots.  It's not going to be long before my son grows up and doesn't want me shooting pictures of him.  I want to take advantage of the times that I have to capture a completely inquisitive mind playing with his toys or creating scenes in his head and acting them out on the furniture.  I want to try to capture those precious moments where he is in his own little world playing and having fun.  It's not very often that we get to really catch those moments, so I want to try to get as many as I can.

For these, I'm just going to rely on whatever lighting is available...be it natural light or the lights in our house and really focus on catching those moments that make my heart melt.  I'm not going to try to pose him to get better shots, or move things around to de-clutter the scene...I just want him to be himself, and try to catch/preserve as many memories as possible.

He is growing up so fast now.  I know it is cliche, but it really does seem like it was just a few months ago that we brought him home from the hospital.  Now, he's running around, climbing on everything possible, driving cars down his slide and trying to ride the dog.  Before I know it, these moments too will be gone and my little guy is going to be all grown up.

Let me know what you think.

T.

New background

For Christmas this year my wife and in-laws bought me a background stand and a couple roles of background paper, among many other generous things.  I had yet to take the wrapping off of the background paper and was getting antsy to set it up and use it.  Last night, before putting our little boy down to bed, I decided to set up the stands, open the paper and try a quick photo shoot. 

So, even though our son was in his PJs, drinking his nightly bottle, I thought I could throw his pea coat and scarf on him and no one would know the difference.  So, I set up my small soft box, adjusted the light and camera to how I wanted it, put his coat and scarf on and got to work.

Unfortunately, as he was winding down for the night, he was not quite in the mood to cooperate with a photo shoot.  He is getting increasingly curious about everything, and a brand new role of paper hanging from a pole was just something new to check out.  He wanted to play with the paper, hitting it, pulling at it, almost tearing it a few times and wanted to do anything other than stand still and look at me.  We tried giving him his bottle, standing him up really quickly, yelling, cheering, whatever we could do to get his attention, but he just wanted to play with the paper.  My wife would hold him, making sure he was standing in the middle of the roll, then let go and jump out of the scene really quickly and I would try to snap off a few pictures before we completely lost him.  This happened a few times until he finally gave up, sat down and tore my paper.  Luckily, the background paper roll is 36' long, so I've got plenty of paper to spare.

I took about 25 shots, but really only got 5 shots of him even remotely looking at the camera.  The entire shoot only took about 5 minutes and he was out of his jacket and finishing off his bottle before bed.
This is the only shot that turned out pretty well.  He's half turning, looking at the camera, looking like he's going to say something.

From all of the playing that he did with the paper and the hard lighting I used, you could really see all of the crinkles in the paper that he caused.  So, in Photoshop, I took out the crinkles then added a slight pattern over the background to give it just a bit more interest.  I think it helps make a flat, somewhat boring background pop a little more.  Hopefully the pattern is muted enough that it isn't too distracting.

Either way, I was pretty happy with the way that it turned out, even though we couldn't really get him to cooperate or pay attention.  Lesson learned...don't try a photo shoot within 20 minutes of bed time...it's not going to go well!

Let me know what you think.

T.

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.