Boy, this guy had a lot of energy. He was having his birthday party after the shoot. Hmmm, maybe I will avoid that next time 
)
My goal is always to have fun at a shoot. I could not see trying to tie this guy down to a chair and getting him to smile pretty. So we did all kinds of stuff. Race car helmet, flopping on pillows, and power kicks. I kept on getting him to yell as he was jumping. Just would not be the same without it.
You have all heard the comments; “Way too expensive”, “Too much work”, “Everybody gets stressed out”. Of course, this is not always the case but it does bring up a good point. Why do we do it?
Well here is one answer for you. It is the celebration of two people who want to, and believe that they can, carry out a life long commitment to love and cherish each other no matter what life can throw at them. Now that is something to celebrate.
It is too easy to throw away life’s markers and just go on day to day. The gathering is more than a time to renew aquaintances. It is also a commitment by all those who gather to do everything in their power to help the couple as they grow together. It is a shift from individualism to the community.
Here are a couple of shots from Michael and Jacky’s wedding from the first week in June. Quite a party. Congratulations.
Every generation adopts something that the older generation either does not care for or outright despises. The same holds true for photography.
I took a ‘helmet shot’ of a young man with the intention of blending in some textures to give it a grundge look. Here is what I started with. Not particularly inspiring but I had a picture in my mind of what it would be.
I proceeded to work on it. I used textured layers and various actions to get the effect that I wanted. Here is what I ended up with.
The young man’s reaction was various shades of ‘awesome’. He liked it. And the mother? Her response was “that is nice but can I have copy without all the ‘….grundge stuff’?”
Go figure. I made them a copy of each.
One of the privileges I have as a photographer is to get to know new people. Everybody comes with a story. It is my job to hear the story and paint it into the photograph, so to speak.
The family had gathered from different ends of the country to see the parents off to Rwanda. One of the daughters brought the first granddaughter.
When will they all be together again? Nobody knows. The photography session was a way of marking the occasion and creating images that would help them remember the good time they had together.
In our frantic lives, we need to step back and take time for the important things. We may hesitate because gatherings such as these take time and money to pull off. Yet, these are the things that we will remember long after all our shiny new toys have rusted away.
In this shot, the three kids are focused on the session while the parents (grandparents now) are focused on the wee one.
This family had fun at their session and it shows. Because we had a pre-session consultation, we knew exactly what to do. This is especially important because babies usually limit how much time you can shoot.
Because we had a plan, the actual session only lasted a half hour. Everybody, baby included, got through without crying.
We also took a few minutes to take a traditional mother\daughter\granddaughter photo.
In February I was able to do a shoot with some friends. Their daughter was visiting from China so they dropped in to the studio.
This shot, with the fur lined hood, is a traditional North American glamor shot. Many who have seen it have given favorable comments. But glamor is dependent on culture and she did not care for it.
One of the challenges for a photographer is to listen to the individual rather than impose your own criteria. In this case it was a cultural issue. The same listening principle applies even to those from within the same culture.
There are many voices which tell us to conform to a certain ideal of 
beauty. Yet, every person is different and has an inner beauty that is their own.
My goal, as a photographer, is to give value to that beauty and to bring it out.
A smile is not always necessary to capture a special moment. This little one was a bit shy and moved around constantly. We let her move and play and waited for right moment.
I caught her as she was giving a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure mommy was still close by. The look says it all. Mommy loved the shot.
