The Way Back Machine and Turlock Family Portraits

Posted by David

Time to hop into the way back machine. During the hustle and bustle of the holidays we toooootally slacked on blogging our shoots. I'm going back through the archives and finding beautiful people to share with you as we don't like excluding anyone.

The 'H' family is just filled with beautiful people. And boy were they troopers. It was freezing that night as you'll be able to see in the first shot. It was one of those times where you understand what fingerless mittens are for, and apparently it's photography.

I went to Jr. High and High School with mom (Christie). Turns out that her husband Peter had been after Christie for years to get family photos. Luckily for both Peter and us, Christie noticed my posts on Facebook and finally caved in. Peter's Christmas present last year was family photos. I think my favorite part of the day was when we had mom and dad kiss. I wasn't sure who blushed more, the kids or them.







Next Up: Another engagement shoot. Don't worry, it won't be in the way back machine. More like the week back machine. And if you haven't signed up to the RSS feed, or Networked Blogs, there's no better time than the present.

The Perrieras: Gustine Family Portraits

  So, as we've said before, we have a lot of catching up to do. I'll (David) be posting an update with all the haps going on with Melody and David Photography. It has meant many a sleepless night, but we're making huge progress via leaps and bounds. Now let's look back to November and take a look at the Perriera family portraits. 

  Ah, the Perrieras. These guys were a hoot, especially mom. The eldest daughter is a senior at Melody's high school. I believe we shot this one over Thanksgiving break. The high school was out for break but the college was still in session, taking midterms. That made it one of those lucky times when we could get over to the college during the week while they had the water turned on at all of their fountains.

  This is also when I first played with something that I told Melody was "magic water." It's a beautiful effect that lets the water all blend together as it rushes down. Without it, you get something more like this. 

  Note the almost murkiness of the water. Basically the shutter speed is set so fast that it is freezing the action in place. In the above example the shutter speed has been dialed down to 1/8 of a second. In order to catch it you have to have a tripod or a really steady hand. Luckily, I have a really steady hand. 

  As another example of how well Melody and I work together as a team, we've since decided that I get to take the "magic water" shots when we set up for portraits because I can hold the camera steadier than she can. Of course without her there to help pose, I'd be lost, so we combine our efforts and come up with some great shots. 

  We were also out there to take a few senior portrait shots of the eldest. I know it might not look it from the above photo, but the young lady is actually years older than the "little" brother. I can relate to this since I call my brother my "big" little bro. We scrawny people have to stick together. 

  While you get a hint of it in the background of some of the group shots, what you're not seeing yet is just how gorgeous the ginkos at the college were. Melody and I wanted so badly to get back out here before the leaves all fell to the ground. We even sent out a message on Facebook asking if anyone wanted pictures for free (no takers). We did get a booking with the Hills though, which I'll be posting soon, though it was a bit more chilly that day than on this one. 

  

  And then we ended the day on something new and fun for the season . . . A LEAF FIGHT!!!

  All and all, this was a great shoot. The funloving nature of the Perrieras got us to try some cool things that we've since worked in to our repertoire. I'm still a bit dismayed that we couldn't get the eldest into a tree, even with her brothers help :o) but we had a great time none-the-less. 

  Thanks to the Perrieras for a memorable shoot. 

Family Photography - Victor and Irma

Lyzette was a student in my sophomore English class many years ago, and I have known her mom Irma and adorable sisters almost as long; as a result, it was a real pleasure to get to spend an afternoon with their family.. despite the bitingly cold weather the day of the shoot! They were all wonderful sports - even little Lolita, the pup, was willing to pose for a few of the photos.

 

Happy and Hectic Holidays

And now Melody is up.

It has been a busy holiday season, during which we did numerous shoots, in addition to attending all of our own festivities. We were so busy, in fact, that I didn't even start Christmas shopping until the day before Christmas. Oops.

One highlight of this holiday season was receiving holiday cards from people we had photographed... and whose cards featured our images. We know of several different families whose Christmas cards included our photos so far! We are so pleased that they liked how we portrayed their families enough to share with their friends and loved ones. These are the two cards we picked up in the mail yesterday. Greg, Nicole, and Emilie are a family we've had the pleasure to work with on more than one occasion, as has been the case with Lyzette and her family (you'll see more of her in her recent sessions with her family, her honey and the baptism we shot of their godson).

Thanks to all of you who shared a piece of your holiday season with us, and for entrusting Melody & David Photography with your memories. We hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours... and that you didn't gain the 5 pounds I did in the past two weeks!

~Melody

Playing Catch Up: Modesto Area Photographer

Hello all, David here. Well it would seem as though Melody and I are way behind on the photography blog. The reason is a good one, trust me. We haven't had time to post because we've been so busy doing actual photography! But that's not all, we also put down two weddings in the books for 2010! That meant a long and very boring weekend of contract preparations.

Aside from the two wedding meetings last week, plenty of shoots, and photo edits, we also had our first indoor shoot that turned out rather well considering what we had to work with. Typically, indoor, posed shoots are done with a whole host of intricate lights set up. Lights set at 45 degree angles, a back light, fill light all with diffusers. It means spending a small fortune. Our first option was going to be an outdoor sitting where light wraps around subjects beautifully, unfortunately Mother Nature had other things in mind . . . like rain. So we got the family of nine in front of their fireplace and did our best.

Shhhh, it's a Christmas present for Grandma.

I hope to have time in the near future to show you our lighting setup. Needless to say, we didn't go with the small fortune gear. Believe it or not we lit them with a series of modified shop lights, shown through our ring diffuser on one side and then through a shower curtain on the other. I wired the shop lights up with dimmer switches and built a collapsible frame for the shower curtain to hang on. I'll have to set it up and take a couple shots of it so you can see what I'm talking about. All in all, I'd say it worked out just fine. Really, it doesn't matter what everything off frame looks like, it's the picture that counts.

There's one more shot that I wanted to share before I head off to bed. While I was packing up gear, Melody went around the house and took candids of everyone. She got an especially cute one of my good buddies niece. It was cute when we presented it to the family, cute enough for them to choose it as one of their top ten choices to be touched up.

Generally, the way Melody and I work is that we come home from a shoot and she's incredibly excited about the images. Sort of like a kid that can't wait for Christmas morning to get here so they go and shake all of the presents. She uploads all of the photos and starts working on filtering out the bad ones and making general lighting adjustments to the rest. What you see to the left is how this image got cropped and exported.

After the client views their photos to be touched up, I usually take over and go in to do all the magic photoshop stuff. I might replace eyes from one shot with those of another, trim up waist lines, fix folds in clothing, rid eyes of dark shadows, clean up complexion, take out unsightly distractions from the background. Basically, you name it, I can pretty much do it. What I tend to do is start over with the image. I use Melody's initial changes as a direction to aim for but create a copy of the raw data and go back and start over. With this pictures I decided to even go so far as to change the crop.

 The new crop brought the focus in on the niece. That was pretty good, but I wanted to take it even further. Although I don't think she was swinging her cousin around in a circle, the above image implies that she is just through the motion of her hair. I wanted to capture that motion in the background of the photo as well so I went in and did something that I NEVER do, and blurred the background.

Generally, a blurred background created in a photo editing program is an excellent example of an amateur photographer. What they're trying to accomplish is something called "bokeh." It's a beautiful effect when done right, but it's only done right when you do it the way you're supposed to, and that's with the camera.

Bokeh is when you narrow your depth of field. It has the greatest success when using a lens with a very short focal length. The reason it works on camera and not in a program is because the amount of blur is lessened the closer you get to the point of focus. When you try this in the computer everything is blurred evenly. There's no sense of depth, just this blurry mess of a background that mysteriously stops when you get to the subject. What makes it even worse is that most beginners use the basic blur function or a gaussian blur. This blurs the pixels in every direction, creating a sort of fuzzy, or soft appearance depending upon how far you push it.

In the case of this image, I decided that a motion blur, angled with the plane of the table, would be perfect for capturing that sense of motion. It gives the viewer the impression of moving with the two girls as they spin around when in fact they were stationary. Frankly, I absolutely LOVE this shot. It's a perfect example of how well Melody and I work together as a team.

Well, winter break is coming up and I'm hoping it will be filled with photo shoots and time to catch up on things like this blog and editing the website. Thanks for stopping by.

~David

Busy Business!

We've had a wonderfully busy and productive week.

Last Friday we had a delightful session with a little sweetie named Mason. He is approaching his second birthday and his baptism, and his family -- which includes some of my all-time favorite former students -- was looking to have a portrait session to commemorate these occasions. At the beginning of the shoot, he was very reserved and shy, clinging to his mama. After a while, David coaxed him into playing, and they dashed about the playground gleefully. At one point, the dearheart stopped his play, ran over to David and threw his arms around David's neck for a long, snuggly hug. Talk about heart-melting! I can hardly wait until we cover his baptism next month!

On Saturday, we then had three portrait sessions with students from Gustine. One was the school's homecoming queen this year, and the other two are students who were in my AP class last year and are in yearbook this year. They were absolutely full of giggles and hilarity, which made for some wonderful shots full of genuine smiles and good humor.

Sunday found us out with Greg, Nicole, and Emilie for some family portraits at Greg's ranch. Greg had recently proposed to Nicole, and so this was a perfect opportunity to celebrate their commitment to each other, as well as to recognize the joining of the three into a family. Emi loves to make faces, some of which we captured quite well. Overall, these were not typical stuffy family portraits, but something more organic.

And yesterday we had 7-week old pistol Payten and her radiant mama, Dawn. During our time together, Dawn was a trooper, smiling through the hazards of taking naked baby pics - pee and poop galore! For almost three hours, we worked to get the shots we wanted while the little miss fussed and squirmed. In the end, we got our way... largely after David once again won over the little angel. Truly, the young ones must be able to sense his goodness, as they always take to him so well!

The next three days will bring new postings, as well, as we have four shoots: a senior portrait session with Alexandria; a maternity session with Angelica and her husband; an engagement sitting with Dri and Dru, a rather edgy pair; and a shoot with some sexy maids. Watch out for those results soon!

~Melody