My First Family Photo Shoot

The Mortensen family took a leap of faith and let me take their family portraits for them this year.  Thank you for the opportunity and practice Mortensen family!  This was my first “official” family session although I’ve done my own family before just using the camera timer.  Autumn had a lot of good ideas already for poses and picture spots.  We spent the whole time in their backyard which is very reminiscent of my own.  Except that the Mortensens seem to be able to keep their chickens alive.  Here are some of my favorites:

Similar to the session I did with the Dalton kids, I need to step up my attention grabbing skills for those group shots.  I spent some good quality time practicing my head swapping abilities in Photoshop because I couldn’t get everyone looking at the same time… despite my whooping and hollering.  Leah recommended blowing up a balloon.  Kids can’t help but stare at a balloon being blown up.  I’ve got an idea to patent a hat that has a balloon on top and a tube running down it into my mouth (oops, public disclosure…. guess I won’t patent this one).  Then, when I’m ready to take the picture, I can start blowing up the balloon.  This is good in three ways.  First it would grab the attention of the little ones.  Second, peoples eyes usually look great when they are looking just over your head rather than directly at the camera (it make the whites of the eyes a little more pronounced on the bottom of the eye).  Third, who can’t help but smile at a guy blowing up a balloon on his head while standing on one foot and with a camera plastered to his face.  Maybe I’ll make the balloon on my head a balloon animal like a Giraffe or something.

In the end, I couldn’t decide on a color scheme again.  I liked some pictures in B&W, some under saturated, and other over saturated.  So, I’ve included all of them in each of these 3 colors schemes on their DVD.  I’m also expecting to get faster at this as my experience increases. 

To help me see how my time improves, here is how much time I spent on this session.  I spent about 30 minutes scouting Autumn’s backyard and about 30 minutes cleaning lenses and checking equipment before the shoot.  Travel time was minimal since they’re on the same block as us and the actual shoot only took a little over 60 minutes.  I ended up with almost 300 images.  I posted proofs and had Autumn pick out about 20 of them that I could edit (about 90 minutes to download, sift through, and post proofs).  Then, I sat down and reviewed photos, color treatments, and other questions with Autumn (30 minutes).  I didn’t keep exact time, but I’d say I spent about 12-15 hours afterwards in Lightroom and Photoshop playing with exposures, colors, healing, cloning, swapping, vignettes, removing drool, etc.     So, total of somewhere between 15-20 hours.  I’m sure I’ll get much faster.  I bet I could get it down to 5 hours easy.  Right now I’m limiting myself to one session per week, but I like to learn fast.  Did I ever tell you I was the most improved golfer on my high school team for two years in a row?  Good or bad, I get consumed by things and like to learn every nook and cranny.  Photography has A LOT of nooks and crannies.

Thanks again Mike and Autumn for letting me take pictures of your family.