Teach it Tuesday | Behind the scenes on a creative family portrait session
When my son's pre-k (what they call pre-kindergarten here in the states) teacher asked for a recent family photo I knew we had to do one up the one from last year.
I sat down with my sketch book and created 4 or 5 really awesome concepts that I thought would be fun to photograph and process... after all, if this becomes a chore it defeats the purpose right? In the end we decided to make a photograph around my sons favorite toy, a colonial era brick fort... we just switched out the Red Coats and Yankee soldiers for fairies, goblins and lost boys.
The gear:
Nikon D800
Nikon 50mm f/1.4G
my busted up tripod (thanks to my buddy Scott who helped me get it fixed up)
2 x led light boxes on light stands (you can buy them here)
The Process:
I photographed the fort first, and placed markers where I though each of us would be located in the final image. This helped me determine the right perspective, light and shadow placement. Once we had a good plan together, I had each family member stand in and do several poses, screams and attach motions. For the boys I positioned the camera above our heads to give the illusion that you were looking down on us and for the girls I laid on the floor and had them stand on a crate so it looked like you were looking up at them. Once we had all of the photos that we needed I loaded them all into Photoshop and extracted each character from their background, matched color, brightness and sharpness. You can watch that whole process here:
It took me about an hour and half to photograph the fort and each character in costume and another 5 or 6 hours in post processing. The final image is hanging in my sons class room right now :)
Maury + Cara.
I will never forget the first time that I spoke with Cara (Cara is a designer and Maury is a video guy out in LA)... she was planning a wedding across the country with her fiance Maury. We talked for a while about what she had in mind for her big day and I was sold... Their destination wedding took place in a private backyard on a beautiful afternoon in San Marco, Florida.
Day of wedding coordination / decore: Coastal Celebrations
Floral: Conservatorie
Hair and makeup: Amanda Hopcraft
My afternoon with Sara Lando.
My favorite photo of Gigi aided by my temporary assistant Tillie and Sara whose suggestion to add wind was what turned this from good to great.
On Sunday, I drove up to Atlanta to attend Sara Lando's portrait workshop. OMG. If she ever passes through your city/state/country/continent -- do whatever you have to do to get there. Beg and plead if you must; it will be transformative.
Her discussion on how to interact with models/clients had me dizzy -- it was so simple and obvious. I was honestly stunned that she could drop a bomb like that on me, and if she had stopped there, I would still have been left thrilled. But she didn't. Sara went to work on destroying the artificial barriers I had created around a set of creative concepts that I wanted to do but had decided were just too tough. I mean, have you ever been Kung Fu kicked by a seven stone ballerina?
The workshop has continued in my head and in my notebook since I walked out of the class. I have been drawing up solutions and ways to apply her advice, and then turning it all around to see even more little gems falling out.
Here is my advice:
- Get to her workshop. Leave your ego at home. Walk in with a clear mind and a clean sheet of paper -- she will easily fill both.
- Listen. Your mind will be racing with ideas, solutions, and little tiny sparks as parts of your brain kick to life. Just focus. What she is laying out isn't rocket science but it will take you to the moon.
- The magic is in the why. Everything that was said on Sunday was sort of this multi-faceted truth where when you looked pass the brilliant "what," you found this invaluable "why." The why is the most important part.
- Resist the urge to defend or even explain your work. She respects you. She respects your work. Our workshop had this amazing critique section where she very gently offered her advice. Let her share her insight that would make your process and photos better. (She can't help you if you are moaning about not being able to use Photoshop, which of course I did).
I need to thank the gorgeous Gigi for being a patient and enthusiastic model. My workshop experience would not have been complete without her hard work.
And holy crap, Zack was an amazing host. It was really neat/weird getting to chill with someone you see all the time and have learned so much from, but who doesn't even know you. Of course I pretended like it was totally normal while my inner five year old was doing cartwheels. Check out Zack's work and follow him on twitter. The man practices what he preaches: be the signal not the noise.
A huge thanks to Bernard who was very patient with all of us space invaders and to Alessandro who was cool and kind and listened to all of my stories about my trip to Italy.