Happy children and engagement photos.

I suppose I should get an obligatory, "happy fourth of July!" out of the way before I start this post because I don't have anything Independence Day related to talk about :O I could have taken photos of the fireworks downtown last night, but I didn't bring my camera. More on that later, actually.

Nephew and niece.

So while I'm sorry that I don't have anything patriotic to share, I am delighted to say that I had two extremely successful shoots this weekend. After a week of being lazy and hardly taking any photos (I had reasons but shame on me all the same!), I had two full-out shoots to round off the week with. I just ended a sentence with a preposition and for that I am sorry.

My sister and her daughter Emily and son Elijah.

On Saturday I packed up all of my gear and went to my sister's house to take photos of her children. My nephew Elijah will be four in October, and my niece Emily turned one in February. They're certainly not the easiest age range to work with! My mom, sister and I encountered a fair amount of issues while attempting to get them to cooperate. We ended up down by the beach because there are some lovely photo taking areas, but they ended up being too excited about being in a new area.

Not 100% sure how I feel about the one on the left. I think I'm headed in the 

right direction but it's still incomplete. Love the one on the right though!

Emily's primary interest rested in tossing rocks into the water, which was adorable, and it did not lead to many good photos. Perhaps someday I'll invest in some waist-high waders, but on this day I had no way of getting out into the (super cold) water to get pictures of her face while she threw rocks.

 Face snuggles and kisses from her kids.

I did my best to remember what I had learned while at the first studio in Ireland. It was a family and child portrait studio, which is not my forte. However I did pick up a few useful tidbits on how to photograph children and I tried to put them to use on Saturday. Cassidy and I had ideas in mind about what kind of photos we wanted, and the kids were having none of it. Eventually we gave up and tried to just go wherever they wanted to go, but they still lacked the interest and cooperation to look at the camera.

Elijah. Not sure what he was going for but

he was looking at me so I went with it.

As we were preparing to leave, dejected and resolved to trying again another day, the two became enthralled with a big toy/jungle gym type play structure that was in the park. We stood and waited for a few minutes before I decided to give it one more go. I climbed inside and attempted to get a few photos that way, but still no luck. Finally Cass climbed inside of it with Elijah and that's when the magic happened.

Little Emily playing at the bottom of the slide.

We were finally able to get the photos that my sister was hoping for, it just had to be on the children's terms. Even though I knew that, I was still uncertain of how best to go about it. The whole day was a learning experience, to be sure, and I'm guessing that the next time I have a photo shoot with her kids things will probably go a bit smoother. On a final note though I am bummed that the one place they chose to finally cooperate included the big green wheel that was covering parts of their faces in a lot of shots. What am I supposed to do about that sort of thing? I almost fell off of the big toy a few times because I was balanced on a wooden slide and was holding on with one hand while swinging out in front of them. Danger!

After viewing these on the computer I wanted to scream bloody murder

because of the people standing in the background. But hey, nothing 

I could do because it was a public park. Either way this is a great photo

of Elijah and Emily laughing and playing together :)

On Sunday I had another shoot with my friends Rachel and Zach. They're getting married next summer and asked if I would do their engagement photos. I was happy to oblige.

All of yesterday was a raging success of beautiful picture after beautiful picture of them smiling happily in various places downtown Poulsbo. Rachel and I took a walk through this particular park earlier in the week and she absolutely loved it. It proved to be a great place for their photos.

I thought this was a cute idea. Feedback?

We had a really fun time finding different places to shoot, and they did a great job with the variety of outfits that they brought. Rachel and I had discussed a few different places over the phone, and also brainstormed over the different outfits that would go best with the locations in the park, and I'm really glad that everything came together so well.

They were wonderful models, and I'm also going to take a moment to congratulate myself because I think I managed to create some great and natural photos with my knowledge and suggestions for how they should interact :] I've been spending a fair amount of time doing research looking at engagement photos to see which ones I like and which ones I don't. There are so many different options and styles and some are (obviously) more appealing than others.

Under the boardwalk.

While editing a small selection for today's post I began to wonder how long it will take for me to develop a style all my own. Some photographers really have it down, and I know that I haven't been shooting consistently enough to figure out something that's "mine". It's difficult because I enjoy a wide variety of types. Sometimes I am really into hyper processed images, and sometimes the colors are so perfect that I don't want to touch the photo at all. Occasionally I feel that black and white adds the perfect touch and brings out an emotion that simply wasn't present in the color version.

Original in color.

I'm all over the place! I guess it may boil down to whatever my client wants and then I'll go from there. Curious. Can't wait to see what I end up doing.

 Good edits? Bad? Better in black and white or color? Does 

the yellowish/sepia/high contrast on the left even work?

For the fireworks last night I made a conscious decision not to bring my camera. I knew that it would be busy and crowded downtown and I didn't want to have a bag banging around behind me. I wanted an easy night of focusing on enjoying the company of my friends. Fortunately I don't regret the decision, but as the fireworks were going off I found myself wondering which camera settings I'd be using if I had brought my camera and what I'd have to do to get a great picture of the explosions. I really need to get a functioning tripod.

As soon as Cass, Rachel and Zach have picked out which photos they want I'll be posting more, but for now the images posted today were ones that I particularly enjoyed and wanted to share on my blog. I'm not sure what next week's entry will bring. As far as I know I don't have anything big planned for this week. Maybe I'll take some nice photos of Slinky, a new dog that I've come to know. That could be fun. I enjoy animal photography.

-MJ

Under the boardwalk, an experimental shoot.

So I had this grand idea in my head of a fabulous shoot I could do under the boardwalk in Poulsbo. Well, maybe not fabulous, but certainly interesting and fun. My inspiration came from this photo. Whether or not you or I like Kristen Stewart, I find the setup to be enjoyable. I decided to go a different route though and use a male model.

This is my friend Mikus, recent graduate from Full Sail University and an avid bass player. While he was a fun and interactive model, for various reasons I did not produce the effect in my photos that I was going for. Not contrasty enough? Not enough light/light sources? Bad angle, even? I have photos from the shoot that I like and that I'm happy with, but I would certainly like to try this again with a different approach.

That was my setup for almost the whole shoot: one SB-800 through an umbrella. I usually shoot reflective and not through, I just thought that for a change I'd try shooting through. I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference that made, I should have put the backing on and tried reflective. I experimented with the flash zoomed all the way to 105 and all the way wide, both with the dome diffuser on and off. For a couple of shots I took the umbrella off the stand and hand-held a diffuser disc about a foot in front of the flash with my free hand. None of this created the effect I was going for.

Finally I decided to ditch the stationary flash and bust out my TTL cable. This was both better and worse. Better because when it worked, it worked really well. Worse because when it didn't work, it looked like on-camera flash.

I decided that I wanted to make the best of the afternoon, even if I wasn't able to produce the photos I originally sought out to create. I've read before that getting caught up in your original vision can cloud your ability to see a fantastic new photo.

Today's shoot saw more experimentation with EV settings in-camera and through the flash. It was fascinating how rapidly the photos changed based off of the slightest tweaks. Today's shoot also had me wishing for a set of pocket wizards. I don't normally have issues with my SB-800 "seeing" the pre flash from my camera, but I was trying new things today and the sensor on the speedlight wasn't nearly as close to me as it usually is. It was certainly fun to have the flash NOT go off... *grumble*. To top of it off it was pretty bright out so the LCD screen on my camera was of almost no use in determining if the flash popped or not.

More shoots lead to more experience, and more experience leads me to better photos. I'm really happy with the photos I have, but I'm disappointed with the photos I didn't take, the ones that I was aiming for in the first place. The original vision didn't stop me from going in a new direction though, so I'll take that victory.

-MJ