I guess it’s my winters growing up in Upstate New York, or perhaps just that I always have to think about the sun when scheduling portrait sessions in Colorado. To create beautiful portraits, we either need shade to hide from the sun, or need to meet early or late enough in the day that it isn’t super harsh. Then there are the few days every year when it’s overcast and I can create portraits like this…
I guess it’s my winters growing up in Upstate New York, or perhaps just that I always have to think about the sun when scheduling portrait sessions in Colorado. To create beautiful portraits, we either need shade to hide from the sun, or need to meet early or late enough in the day that it isn’t super harsh. Then there are the few days every year when it’s overcast and I can create portraits like this…
[gallery]Ok.You gotta read this entire post to understand the story. Baby isn’t ready to sit up quite yet. Baby in slippery bubble bath. Nope, she’s going scuba diving. So I gingerly ask mom if she’d get a bathing suit on and jump in the bath tub with baby and hold on while I snap pictures of her daughter having a grand olde time in the bubbles. It worked. we all had a great time, I got great shots without dropping my camera in the tub, baby stayed above the water, and we all got splashed.
These August mornings in Denver have been so beautiful. The temperature is perfect, the sun is strong and bright, and everyone is ready to enjoy the outdoors. Here’s a recent session from Governors’ Park.
But I will create their portraits.? I went home happy and with pants smeared with slobber from this session.? What fun!
I didn’t know I got this until I got home and started looking through the portraits.
Usually I drive east to meet families.? I live in Arvada, and I’m often driving to Park Hill, Lowry, Stapleton, and parts east.? This evening, though, as I wound my way up Golden Gate Canyon Rd towards Gilpin County,? I knew I was in for a treat of mountain air, evening light, and a some fun in the woods.
As mom and dad got ready,? the kids and I walked up the road to a neighbors house, an immaculately manicured mountain garden.? Here’s a few of my favorites from the session.
It’s been a few years since I captured this Denver family, and I was excited to see how they’d grown.
Portraits with kids is always a new game every morning. This game started out a little, shall we say, askew. I’ll let the portraits tell the story: First, I had a bit of a time getting the eyes to look my way…
But then, after finding we both know that Cyclops was the one eyed mythical creature, he started looking into my cyclops eye and things started to move a bit faster…
But lets not forget that he’s one of three…
I often tell parents that the first half of a session with a young child is just the get-to-know you phase. If you look at the shots from a session from beginning to end, a relationship is becoming evident between myself and the child, and parents can see that in the way the child appears in the portraits.
These next ones were after we’d been working for about 40 minutes. Sam was ready for his pictures.
Looking forward to seeing these kids in a few more years!
What are the chances that 3 families, each with kids, would be able to find time to meet up in my favorite Denver park for portraits?? Not too good, but somehow, through all the trouble it took to get there, we had a great time in Governors’ Park on Monday.?? Oh,? And the little guy in green?? It took an hour or so, but by the end of the session, he was ready to play.
Here’s a lesson to all of us parents and photographers out there: Carry a camera EVERYWHERE. I took my kids into starbucks for a smoothie and found that they had built a northern facing window to my exact specifications. My son Kieran cooperated for a few minutes.? These are some of my favorite portraits I’ve created of him…for those fleeting few seconds, he connected with Dad and the camera before climbing up on the table and spilling the smoothie.
