A rare occurrence happened recently – all immediate members of the Souther Family were in town, so they took the opportunity to do a family portrait in time for the holidays. Any major holiday tends to be a good time to have your family portrait done, since that is the most likely time to have everyone close by with some free time.
My daughter is one of the hardest kids to get a good picture of. At 3 years of age (4 in a couple weeks), she is a non-stop dynamo of energy that never seems to stop. That energy is magnified even more when we are exploring a new (to her) place.
This past weekend she decided she wanted to go see Red Rocks – as in the Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, but famous by the U2 video in the 80’s. It is actually a pretty popular hangout among people in Denver, there were a lot of people using it for a workout today (running up and down the stairs and “seats” is a popular workout).
Natalie was in explorer mode today, so she wanted to go all the way down to the bottom and look around. I was able to convince her to pose for me a little bit at the top first though. As she gets older, she is starting to enjoy being in front of the camera. Later in the day she told me I should be taking pictures of her splashing in the puddles left by the rain.
I haven’t shot any families with little kids other than my own, but my advice would be to be patient, follow the little ones around, and shoot a lot of pics to get the keepers. It’s kind of like shooting sports. They are that unpredictable and fast paced.
With their oldest home for the holidays with his little one, the Souther Family wanted to get some family portraits done for the holidays. The skies were crystal clear, but it was pretty cold out there. We got some great group shots, and some individuals too. I think we spent at most half an hour out there since it was about 12°F outside. They live here in Lakewood, so I was able to get them a CD within an hour so they could get prints made same day.
I love my little girl. Once in a while I am able to get a good candid of her. But by and large, whenever I take the camera out, she becomes silly and “unmanageable”. Saturday was one of those days. She went to a friend’s birthday party, had her hair and nails done (yes, she is 3), and came home looking cute as a button. Unfortunately, she was really wound up. So I ask you, how (if you can) do you get a child to sit down and do a few good shots? I’m sure if it wasn’t me, she probably would have been fine. I guess next time I’ll just wait it out until she settles down.
There has been a lot of positive response to the Holiday Greeting/ Note Cards that I have created, including ideas for additional pictures. But what about people that really want to personalize it? You can either send me a photo you want to use, you can book me to come out and take a photo of your family or business, or you can send me a product that you would like to feature. Send me an email and let me know what you would like to feature on your card and we’ll make it happen together.
Just in time for the holidays, I am releasing a new line of greeting and note cards. Suitable for businesses, groups or families, these cards are quite customizable. Order them with pre-printed holiday greetings, create your own greeting, or order them blank to handwrite your greeting for that personal touch.
Last week I said that I felt like I was ready to start offering my services. Today I am announcing that I am officially in business. I am now offering my services for both portrait (senior pictures, group events, family portraits and corporate headshots) photography as well as real estate photography.
Why both?
Well, because I like both. And I have time for both, at least right now while my business is new. I decided to pursue portraits because of two things:
1) Megan’s Senior Pictures for Lakewood High School came out so well.
2) One of Megan’s cheerleading friends told me, in no uncertain terms, that she wants me to do her Senior Pictures when it’s her time. That made me feel pretty confident about what I am doing, and confidence is often the last hurdle when undertaking a new endeavor.
I also decided to pursue the real estate photography business because I think I have an eye for it. I know what sold me on my house, and I think I can help a realtor project the image of a house that will speak to people. With how badly the credit market is tightening up, I think it will be more important than ever to have the highest quality imagery for a property that is for sale.
I am not limiting it to real estate for sale though. I also intend to do resort and hotel photography too. Based on the photos I have taken at the Westin Kierland Resort and the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek, I want to offer my services to those types of properties as well.
I have added pages to this site outlining my portrait services as well as my resort/ real estate photography services. You will find sample portfolios for each service. If you are interested in either, please contact me so we can get some dates on the calendar.
I am very fortunate in that I travel a fair degree, both with my family and without. When I am traveling without them, it is fairly easy to stop along the way, take detours to photogenic subjects, etc.
It’s when I am with the family that it gets more complicated. Especially on a trip like our last one. We were making the ~350 mile drive from Denver to Durango to do a campus visit at Fort Lewis for our oldest (she is going off to college next year). I didn’t expect the fall colors to still be quite so intense, but I did know, from past trips down that way, that I would want to take pictures of at least a few things.
On the way down, we did make one stop for photos on Wolf Creek Pass. I didn’t get anything spectacular, I did practice with panorama mode a little bit. A few miles further down the road, I did catch a glimpse of an aspen stand that I liked. But we were already 5 hours into this drive and even I didn’t think it would be worth it to stop.
During the course of the next couple days, we spent a fair amount of time in downtown Durango. I had my camera with me, and took a bunch of pics of the Fort Lewis Homecoming Parade, but that didn’t yield anything spectacular. I almost went to the railroad tracks to get pics of the trains coming back for the night, but even that didn’t sound good to me. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad has had more pictures taken of it than I ever will take in my lifetime. So these would pretty much be snapshots for me as opposed to anything of value. I could have gone down to the railyard to try and recreate this image I shot a few years ago, but I had this nagging doubt that it was getting too late and the moment just wouldn’t be there. Clearly my focus was on other things.
Saturday evening the kids wanted to go do some shopping. I opted to return to the condo instead, and the family took off to the mall. When we had arrived at the Ferringway condos on Friday, I did make a mental note that this place would be good additional practice for my real estate photography. In doing so, I could practice positioning of my wireless flash (love those eBay Cactus triggers), practice HDR exposures (in proper increments this time), and in general practice the proper views of the rooms. So after they dropped me off, I did just that. The results are pretty good I think. Good enough that I think I am ready to officially start trying to make a go of this real estate photography thing, both in Lakewood/ Denver as well as the mountains (Summit County, etc).
On the drive back Sunday, we did make two unplanned stops. The stand of aspens that I saw was still very vibrant. So we stopped and I spent about 10 minutes taking pictures (the one above is one of the HDR versions, processed in Photomatix). We also stopped at the north base of Wolf Creek Pass to get some pictures of the creek. Noone of those came out too well, but there was a good shot of the rock formations that I like.
I try to balance family and photography as much as I can when I am with the family, but sometimes it feels like I should try to do more on the photography side when we go certain places. How do you balance it?
A friend of mine recently had an impromptu family reunion photo shoot come up. Her background, like mine, is traditionally more of an artistic type of photography. She indicated that she had trouble switching to photographer from artist and wanted to know how I managed it.
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Shooting Family Portraits
Family portraits are a fairly new thing for me. So over the weekend I attended a seminar by Sandy Puc. Sandy is a very talented, very creative Denver photographer who has established a highly successful business doing portrait work. So successful in fact, that she now goes out on tour every year teaching other photographers how to be successful in the portrait space. If you have received one of her flyers in the mail and thought about going, REGISTER NOW! This seminar was great, and it covered things as basic as posing to the complexities of marketing your studio for maximum effectiveness. I feel 10 times more confident doing family portraits now, and I cannot recommend this class enough. Check out the info for yourself. If you are interested, register soon, her seminars sell out in nearly every city she goes to.