Thursday 15 August 2013

Family Ties

Way back in March, I introduced you all to the lovely, Alexia.  I babysat her while her parents were both busy at work.  Okay, my Lovely Assistant took care of her while I ran from room to room trying to make sure that none of my stuff got broken.  I also found the time to take a bunch of photos of Alexia, that her parents really liked.  They asked me if it would be possible when the weather warmed up if I could take some more pictures of her, and of themselves as well.  While I like to consider myself as being pretty good at photographing 'stuff', I've never really had that much success when it comes to photographing people.  I've been trying to change that.  My March photos of Alexia proved to be very popular, as were some photos I took of my cousin's newborn son back in December.  I took these photos two weeks ago and gave my friends, George and Laurence (I suppose we can give them names) this past Saturday.  They loved the photos and were nice enough to allow me to share them with all of you.  It's not easy to take photos of kids, especially kids that are full of energy and don't want to sit still for very long.  I had one thing going for me in my favour.  Alexia is already comfortable with me as we've seen each other several times.  I was told that she even says my name when she's sees my picture on my Facebook page.  Ah, I can't tell you how awesome it is to be popular with the under-three demographic.  Even with the familiarity, Alexia got a little tired of the camera after a little while, and began to hide from the lens.  I kind of new then that the photoshoot was over.  My Lovely Assistant and I still stuck around for a little bit.  Gotta make sure that the little tyke still thinks of me as 'friendly' in case some more photos are requested in the future.  We met at Seaway Park in Saint-Lambert, and I had a little twinge of worry as soon as it dawned on me that much of the park was currently torn up or littered with construction equipment because of work being done on Riverside Drive.  George and Laurence were more worried about the weather, was it was a tad bit cloudy and the forecast called for rain.  I assured them that this would not be a problem, but rather was better as the clouds would act as a natural diffuser against the sun.  We all got to the park around the same time and managed to find a little green space that didn't have any water tubes or large tractors in the immediate area and got right to work.  As I don't do that many photographs of people, I don't have a large library of poses in my head that I can call upon when trying to get people to have their picture taken.  This was a similar problem back in school as we needed to know how to get the right poses out of the models for our Fashion Photography course.  One tip that was given to me back then was to look through fashion magazine and cut out some of the photos of the models and then use those to show to the model that you are shooting.  My Lovely Assistant was kind enough to sacrifice some of her magazines back then to my education, but at the moment, neither one of us has any 'family' magazines around the house.  So, I hit the internet the night before and did a search for 'outdoor family pictures'. I'd like to say that it made a difference, but the poses you see today were 100% decided by Alexia.  Telling a two-year old to 'sit on the rock with your right hand against the other rock while you let the wind blow through your hair', doesn't really go over all that well.  Here's the simple truth.  The kid is in charge.  You shoot, and you better be ready to shoot, when she stops.  The first picture was taken at f/4, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/4, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  Photograph number three was taken at f/3.5, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  The fourth photo was taken at f/4, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 50mm and the final photograph was taken at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  It was also cropped to 12" x 12" as I liked the circle inside of a square look.  The observant among you might have also noticed that all of the pictures were taken at 50mm.  That's because I used my 50mm prime lens.  It's little, it's plastic and it probably my second favorite lens in my bag.  Whenever friends ask me what kind of lens to get, I always tell them to get this lens (link leads to a review by The Digital Picture).  This was a great way to spend an afternoon and I had a blast taking these photos.  Alexia has a really expressive face, as do most children, and I'm really happy that I manage to capture some of her unique smiles on my camera.  The fact that George and Laurence really liked them is a real bonus.  If there are some people who you don't want to disappoint, it's the parents.  Especially when the parents are friends of yours and requested that you take the pictures in the first place.  I hope that all of you out there like them as well.




***BONUS COVERAGE****

This photo wasn't originally going to be part of my post, but Laurence thought it was very funny and asked me to put it up as well.  We titled this photo 'A Couple Of Monkeys' and how long you get to see this picture will depend on how much of a sense of humour George has.

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