Hot Summer at Grand Geneva

A summer afternoon in Lake Geneva generally pans out to walks around the lake with a stop downtown for some refreshments.  This time I had the chance to walk the grounds at Grand Geneva with two young families to capture their kids, their expressions, and their youthfulness.  This summer I have been working on using the Canon 580EXII flash during the middle parts of the day to bring in a more washed out, over exposed look.  In many other instances, I like to back up the subject against the light, so that the sun is behind them and use my flash as fill light to light their face.  This has really helped with keeping some of that harsh midday shadows off their faces.

Back Home

With daddy being home on leave from the service, we were able to get everyone together for some candids.  It is so rewarding seeing this young son and his father!  Using the back drop of the St Francis monastery in Burlington, we were able to capture this young boy, his smile, and his wild side.

The Train Yard

I recently found a fantastic venue to shoot at while taking a few shots of my 1986 Nissan 300zx. This place is great, our little subject could not stop talking and pointing to all the surrounding train related items. We found everything from rustic stock yard buildings, to rail spikes. A great place for a young train enthusiast.

Merry Christmas to All

Its come to that time again to send family and friends Christmas cards.  One thing I love about them recently is that photo cards have become the best way to send your holiday cheer.  In my house, the same is true.  For just a few cents per print, you can get great looking prints with matching graphics and text to match your style.  I wanted to give the new muslin a run, and the results were great.  The shots were set up with one Canon 580 EXII set straight on, and one set camera right, both shot into reflective umbrellas.  I used a reflector disc to bounce back the light onto the left side of their cheeks.  With all muslin, it gets wrinkled.  Using a small aperture brings the focus to those wrinkles, but widening the aperture to F/4.0 kept the background nice and buttery.

Thanks to all that have allowed me to photograph your families this year.  It has really helped me learn!  Merry Christmas to all…

Nick

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…

Halloween came and went, and it seems that our neighborhood has decided that this holiday is equally as important as Christmas.  I have never seen so many home decorations.  It was quite impressive. Considering the temperature outside, I would have thought a few kids might stay at home, but again, candy reigns supreme.  I decided to stand in the driveway besides a fire and hand out candy to our neighborhood kids running the streets.  My little girls didn’t make it very long, but I was able to get our youngest in front of the camera for a few shots.  Its easy to see the fairest one of all…

Weiß, Blanco, and белый

I have been doing some reading recently and trying to determine the best possible way to shoot against a white backdrop.  There is something about a subject placed against a sheer white background.  The crispness really appeals to me.  Now, there are plenty of ways to Photoshop the background completely white, but that takes plenty of time.  I wanted to find a way to use a low f/ stop slower shutter speed and my speedlites to blow out the background, yet keep enough light for the facial expressions.

I first setup the white linen backdrop, and covered the front half on the floor with a fake fur that I picked up on the cheap from Wal-Mart last week.  The added texture would help with the softness of the look I was going for.  I placed my usual speedlite behind myself, fired down towards using a white shoot through umbrella.  I placed my second speedlite behind the backdrop pointed back towards me shooting through yet another umbrella.  I knew that the linen would help diffuse the light, but wanted additional softness so using the umbrella really help spread the light across the entire backdrop.  I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 L dropped to f/2.8 and set the shutter to 1/100 – 1/125 which helped saturate the image and blow out the backdrop.

Up until this point I had been afraid to use their type of technique because the background just appeared gray and unlit, but I will be using this one again in the future.  The help of a monolight will assist with setting up the shot.

Someday My Prince Will Come

My daughter was given a princess costume as a gift for some occasion from a good friend.  We hadn’t used it yet since she was a little young to take care of it.  My wife recently took it out of the closet, and there were a few times this last week where she wandered around the house in this adorable little dress up kit consisting of jewelry, shoes, and a tutu.  I knew that I had to take a few pictures of her.  I also haven’t had a chance to use the new chair that I had painted recently, so I felt this was a great opportunity to use it.  I found this chair in the junk heap at my school, and it must be 50 plus years old.  Its one of those that you can’t buy anymore, a kindergarten chair hand crafted from the 1950′s.  My issue was keeping her in it…kids are so much easier to take pictures of when they can’t walk or crawl.  In the end, many of the usable shots were taken from a bar stool.  This prevented her from running off.  I look forward to more pictures of her dressing up…I’m sure she will have makeup on, strutting high heels, and begging for a skirt before I realize it.

I Love My Teddy

Like most parents with two girls, I’m sure there is an over abundance of teddy bears in the house.  I wanted to give a run at shooting the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 L lens from a distance, and more importantly see if the flashes would fire using the Canon ST-E2.  It works really well when using a shorter lens, but I was going to be backing up a bit, and bringing it in tight.  Having the extra bit of zoom allowed me to get really close, but not getting in the way of the umbrella flash stands.  I’m not too happy with the backdrop…even after white balance tweaks its just not looking as white as I want.  Im going to use my third speedlite, a Canon 430EXII to light the backdrop exclusively and see if that helps.  I love that smile…

Family Pack Attack

As the beginning of the NFL season begins, we are all engulfed in the fanfare of our favorite teams.  Trying again to get my daughter interested and excited to watch the Packers, I bought her a Greg Jennings jersey last year after the season was over.  The morning of the Packer/Bears game we walked down to the field at the end of our street to play around for a bit, and this gave me an opportunity to use my new 70-200mm 2.8 L lens that I recently purchased used off a friend.  My daughter had a blast running around, and seeing as though I was wearing a Jersey too (granted it was a classic Craig Newsome jersey from the late 90′s signed by Donald Driver) made it very easy for her to get involved.  Naturally her attention spanned lasted long enough to run around for a few minutes before the fish toys in the stroller took her attention.  I wish I could take credit for all the pictures, but I figured at some point in time I might want to be remembered 20 years from now…so I handed the camera over to my wife, and she did a wonderful job capturing the moment.

Got Beans?

There is only a few things more fun to watch than a baby learning to eat.  These pictures make me laugh…where does that red hair come from?

Learning to Ride

We got our daughter a new tricycle a few weeks back and have been trying to get her to ride it.  She has been more interested in pushing it around…

Two Boys and a Camera

We had some friends over to take pictures of their two boys.  This was an instance where going to the studio at the mall would have been a nightmare, as many times it is.  That was half the reason for me picking up a camera in the first place.  Here, we were able to have a movie running to occupy the oldest boy while we were shooting the baby.  It worked out great, very low key…low stress.  There was no hurry what so ever…as things happened, we went with it.  I asked for a few outfits that they wanted shots in and as you can see, they are Packer fans…and an  Aaron Rodgers fans at that (Phew!).  After shooting inside we went outside to “run a few routes.”  He had such a blast trying to show me how fast he can run across the yard.  When it was all said and done, the 2 hours they were here flew by, and we were left with these memories.