The Treasury on the Plaza | St. Augustine, Florida
Earlier this year my wonderful friend Kate hooked me up with access to the opening night of the Treasury on the Square... I was able to grab some amazing photos of the venue itself and the decor being set up by The Conservatorie.
Treasury on the square ballroom.
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 :)
Happy Labor Day | Meet the Photos by Rob Futrell team | St. Augustine Wedding Photography
Here we spend our weekends photographing weddings and our weeks processing photos, meeting with vendors, clients and sometimes each other. We work pretty crazy hours... and we don't take days off.... we "work" a lot... even today, which is Labor Day here in the US.
I had to look up the origins of Labor Day and if you haven't read about the history of the holiday, you really should. Pretty intense stuff. I feel very fortunate to "work" for so many amazing clients and with such a talented team... so today I am giving a little tribute to the team who keeps this operation running.
First is my lovely wife and second shooter Jill. A fantastic photographer and late night accountant... if only she wasn't a vegetarian.
Next up is my lovely assistant Sarah. A lot of people don't realize that she is the power behind the social media presence here. She writes the blog posts and does her best to keep up with all of the activity on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
And then there is me.
Life is short. Do what you love with people you love.