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.