Jason - 2nd Year Portraits

The last time I saw Jason was about 6 months prior to our shoot. Now if you have a kid, or are close to one, you know how incredibly and ridiculously fast they grow. So this was my reaction to seeing him on the day of the shoot: "WHOA, YOU ARE SOOOO BIG!" I hope I didn't freak him out, or his parents. But here he was with his cool flowing hair and a lot taller than I remembered him. Gone was also his little baby face that I was used to. You can tell by the photos that it took a while for him to warm up to me. But I had him by the end, just look at that smile on the last photo!!! I love it.

Prepping For The Shoot
I wanted to give the parents a different look for Jason's 2nd year portraits. You see, up to this point I had only photographed Jason in the studio. But now that he was running around and climbing stuff I figured shooting outdoors might be a lot of fun. His parents liked the idea, so we went with it. I had with me my strobes and light modifiers, but quickly realized that I wanted to shoot with natural light. Having strobes would have slowed things down way too much and would have felt cumbersome. So I just followed him (ran around) along with a lens. You have to be quick with 2 year olds, my daughter reminds me of this fact on a daily basis!

The Set-Up
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens
- Lightroom for processing and exporting of RAW files

Henry's 2nd Year Portraits

I have been photographing Henry since he was born. He probably thinks that my camera is a permanent fixture that drapes around my neck. We met his parents while attending a Bradley Method birthing class. They are both very cool, thus they have a very cool son. Both Henry and Jocelyn (my daughter) are the same age. In fact, Henry is exactly one day younger than Jocelyn. So it is really a joy to photograph this little one and it is great that I have seen him grow up right in front of my eyes (lens). What I also like about his shoots is that I know that afterwards we will hang out with his parents and have dinner and hang out. And just for the record: I love his red curly hair!

Prepping For The Shoot

I really wanted to bring out Henry's eye and hair color for this shoot. I also wanted to do an outdoor shoot since the previous portraits had been in the studio. So I used my trusty Alien Bee strobe with a medium softbox. I was able to power the strobe with a Vagabond portable battery pack, which allowed for quick recycling of the strobe. This is good thing since I knew I would need to fire a bunch of flashes in a row in order to capture any fleeting moments. The funny thing about plans is that they do not always go the way you want. Henry is a vivacious little dude that LOVES to run (he's 2!), so I had to be ready to capture him away from the strobes. The first couple of images are non-strobe images.

The Set-Up

- Nikon D700

- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens

- Alien Bee 400 with a medium softbox

- Vagabond battery pack

- Pocket Wizards

- Lastolite grey card for white balancing

- LIghtroom for post-processing and exporting

Morty the Dog

This amazing bulldog belongs to a co-worker of mine. She LOVES her Morty. About a second into meeting him for the first time I could see why. He has this amazing feel and warmth to him that you cannot help but be drawn to him. It's kind of like when you met your best friend for the first time. You just clicked. I wanted to get down and hug him and wrestle with him, but I figured that would not be the best 1st impression to make on a dog.

I had been wanting to photograph a dog for some time. I really love dogs, but I am allergic to most so owning one anytime soon does not seem to be in my future. I also wanted to give to my co-worker, and I thought that a handful of portraits of her amazing dog would be encouraging. She loved the photos and I had a great time working with Morty.

Prepping For The Shoot
So how do you approach photographing a dog such as Morty? I had a few to ideas:
- One idea was to use an off-camera flash with an umbrella. I would use my 80-200mm zoom and use a Pocket Wizard to blast my flash. This was my preferred method. I thought Morty might stand still long enough to blast off a few flashes. That DID NOT happen.
- My second idea was to go all natural, which is what I ended up doing. There was no way that he was going to stand still. He seemed pretty excited and full of energy that evening. I also really wanted to capture him in his environment and the strobes would have gotten in the way.

The Set-Up
This ended up being a pretty easy shoot in terms of gear. I used the following gear:
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens
- Tokina 12-24mm f/4 (this lens rocks!)
- Post processing in Lightroom 2

Baby Camden

Babies are amazing little things. They move, cry, make noises, pee on you and fuss. They are also warm, affectionate, funny and beautiful and there is something absolutely magical when they smile. They also mean the world to their mom and dad. I love baby portraits for all of these reasons.

Babies and kids are awesome and I love being around them. Who else will allow you to tickle them, make weird faces and even weirder sounds, and yet still get a laugh? Try all of those things on an adult and see what happens! Wait... that might be a good thing to do.

So back to babies. Babies do not pretend to be something that they are not. They are exactly who they are supposed to be.

I have known Camden's mother for a few years now. We have worked together in the past, so I was totally excited when she told me that she was having a baby boy! News like that is always pretty darn amazing and cool.

So fast forward about a year and she emails me about taking some portraits of her little dude. I was excited to see Camden's parents again and VERY excited about meeting him. The session took about 25 minutes and we were done. In between shooting Camden made sure to drink a bottle, fuss just a little, and then pass gas on his dad. We were all so proud of him.

The Set-Up
For anyone interested in the techno-babble, here is my set-up:

1. AlienBee 400 (1 strobe) on a medium-sized softbox as the main light to camera left
   
2. Nikon SB-800 as fill light with plastic diffuser to camera right
   
3. Black sheet material for the background
4. Nikon D700 body with Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 and Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lenses
5. Post processing in Lightroom 2