((Continued from Part 1))
Back in the Fall of 2012, I took the family out for some portraits. Continued from Part 1, here are some of the best I selected to talk about and display here on the blog.
Pretty much same shot as the last one from Part 1, but I really wanted to capture a closer shot. I loved what CJ did in this one, a great little pose, along with my own more straight on pose, made this shot far more intimate and fun.
I enjoyed editing this one, because I again got a slight HDR feel to it. The biggest problem I had with it, was that the sky was an ugly grey that had to be dealt with, which was odd, because the sky was blue that day. Along with the wonderfully bright trees behind us we made a great silhouette that really stands out. With just a little tweaking, this would have been a great superhero poster, hehe.
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I love playing with angles when I’m out on a shoot. In fact, the only cameras I will buy have flip out view finders which allow me to shoot at crazy angles. I love this angle on Lisa and CJ. CJ was sitting up on a big boulder, and Lisa was standing on the ground, and I was way up above them.In Lightroom and Photoshop, I mainly just tried to retain the colors while subduing them at the same time. I know, that sounds insane, but many times when you play with color sliders, some colors fade before others. CJ’s shoes are quite colorful, and part of the outfit, but they needed to match the color of the jeans and not overpower the rest of the photo. All in all, love this shot.
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There is a park area in town, owned by the family, so we headed over there to check out this wonderful little location. That plaque that CJ’s hands is on, actually mentions these two girls. I took several shots here, so I pulled two into the blog here. The first has a great view of the big hill in the background, and brings a marvelous dark contrast to the low light shot. I kept it purposefully dark so as to bring out the clouds in the sky and not wash stuff out. This type of shot is incredibly hard, but so much fun, because you get so much detail if you can pull it off and not have it look dark.
In the 2nd, I shot downwards on the same post to get the contrast of the sun on the grass, putting them more into silhouette. Also got to play with the angle a bit, focusing more on the models themselves and not the environment around them to get a symmetry. This is definitly a pic I look at often, as these two women are definitely my family and the most important people in my life.As far as the Photoshop end of it, both shots were unbelievable different, but what I love most about it is that its technically the same shot, but completely different in just about every aspect. This is one of the things I love most about photography, move that camera around, find different angles, and really experiment, you never know what you’ll come up with.
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I end with a great little family portrait. Its whimsical, fun, and so technically wrong in so many ways, but that makes it so great. When taking portraits its best to always keep in mind the personalities of the models. It was probably a huge mistake to put me in front, as I’m the bigger person, it makes me look f’n huge, but it catches everyone’s personality. I really love how Lisa’s face is in the sun, and CJ has a cat like look that almost seems like she’s up to something.The editing end of this one was a breeze, as the colors were already there, just making sure that us, in all that shadow, didn’t get lost in darkness. It was especially hard brightening us up with Lisa half in sun, but it turned out to be a really wonderful shot of us as a family.
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All in all, these shots were tons of fun, and I ended up with 22 photos. I’ll edit this with a location to a gallery when I finally decide on where I’m going to start putting up all my photos, as I need to get something up soon to display all my photos in a central location. Anyone have any good suggestions? I tried Flickr once, and....I just hate the interface. I don’t want to put them on Facebook directly, as Facebook’s policies regarding pictures....isn’t too wonderful.
