Archive for October, 2012
Back in 2011, I had the pleasure of meeting Megan Grommes of Megan Crown Photography (Twin Cities) at one of my professional family photographer workshops. Totally out of the blue, I got this note from her a few days ago:
I read your blog post about lighting and people’s houses and wanted to share this: That was one thing I feel I learned from the workshop and PT4P – finding light and making it work in client’s houses. I love this session. The thing is – there was literally NO LIGHT except for one window. Before I would have freaked out! However I was calm and used that one window for all it was worth and I really liked the results – so thank you for your mentorship! I appreciate what you had to teach us.
Megan…that was super cool to hear and man, I love that session, too. I think you did a phenomenal job of working with what you had. The way you used the light captured the perfect amount of emotion and drama and yet, it’s still soft and newborn-like. Well done!
In case you all might like to see some of the work that Megan did at the workshop in Austin, here are just a few of my favs from her:
And, for goodness sake, please be sure to check out Megan’s phenomenal birth photography as well. You’ll be glad that you did!
Regarding the 2013 Pinkle Toes workshops, the deadline is literally just a few weeks away to receive the first $100 discount, so if you want to reserve your spot, you’ll want to do that ASAP.
P.S. I think most photogs out there already know that this is peak holiday season right now, so my communication on the blog and e-mail is going to be sporadic at best ;-). [Of course, I do still Instagram a lot, LOL, because it’s faster and easier and doesn’t require me to be at my computer or using Lightroom]. I have gotten several e-mails wondering if I’m still going to follow up with my little experiment and the answer is of course! I just need some time to sit down and write out a thoughtful response. Thanks so much for your patience, gang!
I was beginning to wonder if this session was ever going to happen for us. You see, we already rescheduled twice because of rain and then wouldn’t you know it, in the wee hours of the morning of our third try, I got a call from this family 😉 and I ended up camping out at the hospital. My goal was to still hold their session that day, but we’d just move it to the afternoon. But as we all know, babies like to be born on their own schedule and I seriously didn’t think I would make it downtown that day. Somehow, it worked out, and as soon as I finished up the birth photos, I hoofed it down to them. I’m so thankful they were so patient and understanding that day! And I have to tell you, that baby girl sure made it super easy to have a wonderful session. They truly don’t come sweeter than her. Just look at those squishy cheeks and that hilarious duck face she makes. Sigh…
One thing that I try to stress over and over again in my professional photography workshops is to have a plan, but be willing to accept it when that plan has to totally go out the window. For this session, we had an amazing plan and Linsey, oh, Linsey worked so hard coming up with most ADORABLE campfire and s’more set up. The weather was perfection, the light was stunning, the outfits she put together were bright and happy, but when we first got together that night, I didn’t think anything would end up bright and happy. You can read all of the details in Linsey’s perfectly written blog post, but I’ll sum it up for you in four words: kids will be kids.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: in my heart of hearts, I honestly did not think we were going to pull this session off. Bless them, they drove all the way in from the Houston area and Linsey was trying so hard to keep everyone happy and cheerful. We were getting desperate. Some lovely stranger at the park even ran to her car to get us a band-aid for the little guy when he fell. I think everyone at the park took pity on us that evening. When it was clear that it was hopeless, I finally took Linsey aside so we could re-evaluate our situation. I said, “We have to come up with a Plan B in case we can’t pull it together before the sun goes down. What are the three most important things to you that you want me to capture in this session?” She looked at me with her big beautiful eyes and said with complete and heartfelt conviction, “I need to look pretty. I need the kids to smile. I need our family interacting together.” Not too much to ask at all. We can do this. I know we can do this!
And wouldn’t you know it that as soon as we had decided to call it a night, miraculously, the kids rallied and we accomplished our goals for the evening: 1) Linsey looked BEAUTIFUL, even when she was surrounded by tears and chaos, 2) the kids DID smile, and 3) everyone came together and looked like they were having the time of their lives. Whew!!!! Thank you so much, Linsey, for hanging in there that evening and for not giving up on me ;-). I hope you can look back on these images and maybe have a little giggle to remember what we went through to get this. And in case you can’t remember:
P.S. You can check out Linsey’s beautiful photography HERE!
This had to have been one of the most natural, relaxed, easy-going families ever. And that always results in natural, relaxed, easy-going family portraits. I especially loved the last series with just the two of them. Their connection was tangible! And could those children be any more adorable?! I think we could have played all night in the creek! (Another fav HERE).
Once we had finished exploring the inside of art gallery in THIS session, we got to enjoy the AMAZING fall-like weather outside that afternoon. A note about this next set of images I’m about to post below: at the beginning of the session, I told them to independently think of their responses to these fill in the blanks, “My wife/husband is_______” and “This baby is _________.” You should know that they did not see each other’s responses to those questions and in fact, this post will be the first time they see what each other wrote. I found this little experiment to be quite telling…
And finally, we thought we’d end the perfect evening with one final statement about this time in their lives. It’s all about:
Another huge thank you goes out to Art on 5th and also to Katie at Modern Muse for the fabulous hair/makeup job. Very much looking forward to documenting this little guy’s birth day in just a few months! Oh, yes! One more thing…you gotta see how crafty his mama is:
She made those awesome letters HERSELF!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, photo sessions with older newborns (4-6 weeks old) are quite fun! It’s really neat when you get to see some personality peeking through and all of those adorable looks babies give when they’re being so expressive. Such a lovely morning spent with this family, basking in the glow of parenthood. (My favorite image from this session is HERE.)
Side note for photographers: it came up in an online conversation recently how lucky I must be to work in all of these homes with tons of great light and beautiful decorations and I wanted to say that in spite of how things may look on my blog, that’s not always the case. This home did have several sources of beautiful light and there were some lovely decorations, but if worse came to worse, I could have potentially shot the entire newborn session in just one of these rooms. Additionally, while the room shown in the last two images was really pretty, but the light was actually not that great. I had to shoot at a pretty high ISO to get this look, but I’m a big fan of backlighting (duh!), so it worked in my favor for these shots. Truly, if you can find (or create) just one small area with beautiful, soft light, you can find a way to make it work for you. In my upcoming 2013 workshops, I will be taking you INTO a client’s home for a newborn photo session demonstration and you can see for yourself just how to make it work for you. Hmmmm…maybe I should go ahead and challenge myself and say I’ll show you how to shoot a session in just one small spot? If we have to, we will! The discount deadlines for early payment for the workshop fees are quickly approaching, so don’t miss out.