portraits – JWNPhoto.com

Articles Tagged with: portraits

Faces

I just love faces. I’ve been making my subjects let me shoot close-up shots of their faces lately because I just find them so interesting, both in a human sense as well as an artistic one. That human face is such an amazing and dynamic canvas of emotion. Every split second is different than the next (at least if I’m doing my job right – I don’t like it forced).

The photo above is Eileen’s face as we got ready to do her bridal shoot. The one just below is my daughter’s friend Michaela who got nabbed as my test model while I was setting up my lights.

Next up is Lindsay, who came by the studio for a killer maternity shoot. She’s pregnant with twins and was so gung-ho to get some cool shots. I was amazed by how good she did!

Finally it’s Gabriel, who is not getting his senior portraits done for another 16 years…

I’ll have a few new posts coming soon to show some of my favorite shots from each shoot (you can see some of those now on my Facebook page). I’m also shooting at another art show at the beginning of next month, so check back soon for details on that as well.

Haley (Part II)

Welcome to my second post of photos of Haley from her photo shoot. This time, it’s all about composites. This first one uses this picture of a road on a foggy morning in Landrum, SC.

The rest of these are a combination of multiple images found on Flickr as free backgrounds and textures, such as these from Flickr user Moosebite. There are a plethora of different types of images that are offered completely free for this purpose.

As for the art of making a composite, I used Photoshop and experimented with different blending modes, opacities, and manipulation of the images through Free Transform. I also used a combination of Snapseed and Color Efex Pro from Nik Software to finish these off.

The challenge for me is not to overdo it, as I did in this photo. It looks like the 80’s threw up on the 90’s and had a bastard child of a background, and poor Haley is stuck looking pretty in the midst of it all. But, it’s about experimenting for me, and I think the photos above work for their intended purposes.

In other news, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me as I will be shooting some stuff at Charleston Fashion Week. It will be my first time shooting a runway show, so I’m pretty stoked! TTYL.

Help-Portrait Charleston 2011

I had the pleasure of not only organizing a Help-Portrait event at MUSC Children’s Hospital again this year, but also of volunteering as a shooter for the Charleston Help-Portrait group at the Convoy of Hope event on James Island. I want to share some of my favorite shots from the day.

This was a lot different from the event I organized. I was one of three shooters, we had 2 editors, registration volunteers, and a makeup artist all in one tent!

Here are a couple of shots from my phone of the other two shooters at the event:

Doug DeLong

Hansje Gold-Krueck

I also got to shoot some other event volunteers, such as these mimes who were performing:

As well as the local fire department:

Help-Portrait CHS James Island Fire Department

I shot a lot of families. It can be challenging to get a group to fit within the borders of a portable collapsible background. There was a lot of convincing on my part to get people as close as possible to each other. Luckily, that also usually got people laughing right away.

When shooting kids, I tried to get them to also pose without their parents so they could let their personalities show. Something about taking a picture with adults makes kids squirm, but when they’re with other kids they really seem to open up.

I also shot a little differently than I did with the MUSC event. I shot in JPEG normal to make the file sizes smaller and also let the camera handle the JPEG conversions to speed up the processing. I shot over 54 different subjects – and I was one of 3 photogs! Needless to say the editors were very busy.

The other change I made was to slightly bump up my ISO to 250 to make my flashes work a little less. I worked 7 hours and never had to change the batteries!

I have to say, it’s nice to let someone else worry about leading every once and a while. Being a professional means a lot more than just taking pictures! For this event though, I just had to worry about setting up and making people smile. I still love leading, but it was nice to have a break from the “business” end of things for a change.

All in all it was a really successful event. I had a blast, and the subjects I interacted with were all unique and interesting people from all walks of life. I didn’t get a chance to check out the rest of the event, although we had a stage right next to our tent so we were jamming to lots of gospel music, which I was enjoying to the point of ridiculousness (although that could have been the exhaustion kicking in). Everybody was in such high spirits though that it was hard not to have a sore face from smiling all day long. You can view the rest of my portraits from the event here.

Happy Halloween

The big night is finally here!

I wanted to quickly wrap up my favorite holiday of the year with some family pics. As you may have read in my last 2 posts (here & here), we’ve had a very busy Halloween weekend.

Trying on the Costumes

Above is a shot I took when the kids got their costumes. Below are the portraits I made during one of the photo booths I did this weekend.

Photo Booth Portraits

We planned on getting our pumpkin carving done on Sunday, but we did not know there was a pumpkin shortage going on! We went to all of the local supermarkets and Walmarts trying to find some pumpkins. We settled on a couple of heirloom pumpkins which were not good for cutting up. I went and got some paint and the kids went to town making their own creations. It turned out to be a creative break from the normal tradition! The kids did awesome.

Pumpkin Painting

We went Trick or Treating with our neighbors. The adults have decided that we need a similar holiday where you knock on everyone’s doors and ask for beverages. Drink or Treating has all the makings of a great tradition – everyone who participates stocks up on their favorite beer and you just walk around town tasting each other’s brew of choice. No need to call a taxi, as you’re on foot & not far from home. I think we could make this work. Who’s with us?

Trick or Treating

The Shot Between The Shots

If you read a lot of photography blogs and/or books, you will hear the veterans of the craft talk about the shot between the shots. That it, the real shot is the one that is caught when the subject is off guard and their true personality shows.

Over the weekend, I was walking my dogs with my son and when we came upon a small pond in our neighborhood. The morning light was awesome and my jaw dropped when I looked up and saw the color of the trees behind the pond. I immediately decreed that it was time to take fall portraits of the children. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter were working at a community garage sale and then I had to take my daughter to piano practice right afterward. That meant no picture taking until the ugly hours of the middle afternoon. Booo. As luck would have it, a bunch of clouds rolled in and turned the ugly direct sunlight into soft diffused daylight! I dragged an umbrella out to the pond that afternoon and asked the kids to stand together for a portrait to send to their Grandmother for her upcoming birthday. I swear, I almost lost my mind trying to get these two to stand still and smile. After only a couple of attempts, this was the best I could do:

I wish I had the patience with my own children to somehow get them to cooperate, but within seconds after this shot my kids were rolling on the banks of the pond and then my son ran off all upset at his sister! Here I was, just getting started, and they were finished. When shooting kids – there’s no practice time. You’ve gotta get it right immediately or else you lose them.

I asked my daughter to smile pretty for some shots after my boy ran off. When I did that, she put on what was obvious to me as the world’s most forced smile and pose. If I could see it, the world would see it as well. So, I began to talk in a crazy demon voice and she started to giggle at my silliness. Luckily, she was in frame. That is the shot at the top of the post, which was my favorite of the day – the shot between the shots. That’s my daughter – a happy kid who loves to laugh, and that’s how she looks when she’s doing it.