At the beginning of Autumn I did an incredible photoshoot for Mommy & Me Bags. They wanted genuine lifestyle portraits of a Mom and her little lady shopping with their super cute matching purses! So, we put out a casting call and received some wonderful submissions but could only choose one. Now, I could see in their submission photos that this little lady had sass, but I had no idea how lucky I was! She was PERFECT! Don't get me wrong, Mama is clearly an incredible model and made my job so easy, but when kids are involved, they kinda become the star of the show, and this kid ROCKED it! The truth is, during a photoshoot, if I hear things like "just sit still", or, "please, come on, just listen", or, "no don't make those faces", then I KNOW that the photos are going to be so excellent. I'm not saying she was misbehaving. She wasn't at all. She was just being a kid and kids don't usually like to sit and and smile for photos! Mom definitely said with a bit of worry a few times "I hope these are going to turn out", ha ha ha. But that's the beauty of lifestyle photography. It's all the moments in between. It's observing with little or no direction and following the models instead of having the models follow you. Most of my clients are pleasantly surprised at how fun and relaxing our photoshoots are because most of my clients have at least one pretty intense photoshoot experience! But really, who wants to sit awkwardly and say "cheese" when you can have photos like these by just being YOU!! Have a look for yourself! And when you're done, head on over to Mommy & Me Bags to enter their contest for a chance to win a FREE Victoria Messenger Bundle, which are the same mother daughter matching purses as in these pictures! Good luck.
Fall in Film.
Since summer ended and a routine was implemented, life has gotten busier and fuller and faster! SO many big changes and new discoveries happen all the time in Adelaide and Audrey's life as they get older! More often I find that we're in a rush, and more then ever I am feeling time just flying by as these two blossom in to wonderful little humans right before my eyes! And of course, more then ever I want to capture moments in our real life. Like, our outings to high park zoo, our trips to the grocery store, brief picnics at the park after visiting the farmers market, going to and from school, puddle jumping to the bakery, and daytime errands with Audrey. These are the moments that matter. And these moments become nostalgic memories way too fast!!
Thanks for reading!
All of these images are scanned negatives that were taken with my Pentax K1000 using 35mm film. Take a look through my Traditional Film Gallery to see more of my images that were taken with traditional film!
What's in a Picture?
Here's a little secret about taking great pictures. A nice expensive fancy camera with all the fancy gadgets will not take a good picture. Well, it may take a decent picture on "auto" if you don't know the manual settings, which is like a glorified point and shoot camera. However, it's the person using THAT camera that will take a good picture if they, know about composition, lighting, the proper camera settings to go with the scene you're shooting and of course knowing how to get that perfect moment! ...Or they take 50 and get lucky with one or two decent pictures. But even with all that, taking the picture is only half of it. The other half is in the editing. And the editing will make or break a picture no matter how good that picture is! It's like baking cookies. You don't want to under do it and you most certainly don't want to over do it.
People are often curious as to what goes in to my editing process and some people don't understand why they can't just have the images right away directly from the memory card. Well, there is no one answer as every image is different, but I do have a process. I shoot in RAW and edit with Bridge and Photoshop. I turn my RAW files into TIFFs. I edit my TIFFS in Photoshop, and then I process them to JPEGs for printing purposes and then in to web-safe JPEGs for sharing online. All in all, the process takes on average, about 30 minutes a picture. Not because I am "photoshopping" your picture, but because a RAW file is just information. That information needs to be turned in to a picture and then adjusted and sharpened so it can be printed. This is so we get the best possible quality!
This here is a fine example because it's a dramatic difference. Over the summer my husband got this really great shot of me and my girls! Only, the settings were on "auto" which wasn't set to allow enough light in because it was adjusting the light to the sky! So alas, the picture was underexposed making it unusable for printing, especially if you are someone that doesn't know anything about editing! And how unflattering is my rolled up shirt with my panties and hip sticking out!? Even with my knowledge of Photoshop, I wasn't sure if I would be able to save it while keeping it's quality. But as you all know by now, I treasure any picture of me and my girls because I am usually the one taking the picture meaning I am rarely IN them so I had to try. With a little of this and a little of that, and about 45 minutes later, PRESTO!
Before.
After.
Perfect! And going on the wall next to the Fraggle Rock picture!
