Lively Blanchards

One of my favorite families! Going back through some images I just had to give this one some attention. They were on time, ready to go and dressed for success on one of the last semi warm and sunny days of the year. I feel as though I really get a sense of each one of them in this particular image. Ok, for composition I just loved the way the sun was hitting the trees behind them and the grass as well. When i used to shoot I would always put the sun behind my subjects so as not to have to battle it for exposure. This works great still but there are some shortcomings. The main issue for me is the lack of background detail. If the light were directly behind the trees they would have lost all of their definition color and brightness. Granted, these types of portraits are about your subjects and not the background. It's still nice to have some depth, however. I photographed this portrait with the 70-200mm lens at 130mm, which also presents a few problems. You are so far away from your subjects and when photographing children, you almost always need to be right in their face to get their attention. Especially outdoors! My next issue is the length of the lens dictates my slowest handheld shutter speed(or so I thought). The new 70-200mm 2.8 IS L v2 is ridiculously sharp and the IS (image stabilization) is insane! This was shot at 1/40 at 130mm which is no easy feat! What's great is even at f9 there is enough depth of field to isolate the subjects with the helping hand of the sun adding just a touch of it's own glorious seperation! All in all a pretty sweet family portrait! Again I went after that cool painterly effect in post which I think turned out rather well. Thoughts, questions, concerns? Almost forgot....Lit with an Einstein Camera Left with Reflector camera right for fill. Hair light by none other than the sun! http://flic.kr/p/iWHrQk

Mind your surroundings

-The more you take portraits, especially locations portraits, the more you learn to really see your potential background and potential light. You also discovery the capabilities and unfortunately, at times, the limitations of your equipment. Location work, more often than not, forces you to push your camera to it's limits. I just finished editing 60 headshot images for my client and I'm proud to say I didn't exceed any limitations of my equipment, only expectations of my photographs. Photographed with a single Einstein 640 through an umbrella with a warming cto (Color Temperature Orange) gel. http://flic.kr/p/i2NNPG

Prepared

All ready for family pics. This is what happens when I don't shoot outdoors for a while. I tend to bring the kitchen sink with me! You never quite know what light you'll be given even when you scout an area hours beforehand! This particular day started off as a gorgeous sunny afternoon with the sun nice and low in the sky to create warm soft long shadows. The sun was moving quickly, however, and the light was changing rapidly. At one point it was if someone just turned out the lights as the sun dropped below some clouds on the horizon. Then it was time to switch to all natural light. You don't need all this stuff to take good family photos, but I used every piece of it at one point in my last shoot. Thanks Erin for seeing this photograph before I packed it all up and helping me carry it all throughout the park! http://flic.kr/p/hWuBty