Family Shoot in the Poppies

[twocolor]

Here is my first family photo shoot in the poppies this year. On average I do around 5 a week for the two weeks they are out!

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[twocolor]

decided to post these as well. Mom ordered a 20x20 of each kid to hang on her wall.

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[Iron Flatline]

Lovely, reminds me of my childhood growing up as an opium farmer in northern Afghanistan... but enough about me.

I like the four portraits, the repeated angle of the head works well. They could "pop" a little more... they seem to lack a little tonal range, or maybe just contrast at the far ends of the spectrum.

Some of the color shots seem to have a slight green hue... but take that with a grain of salt as the monitor I'm working off is not my photography monitor, and seems to be optimized for Excel.

 

[altyfc]

LOL @ Iron...

Great shots. The poppies make a perfect backdrop. I'm glad to see you managed to get one with all of you in.

 

[twocolor]

Thank You Iron and altyfc. This is a beautiful setting. I drive up there everyother day in June until I know EXACTLY when they are in full bloom! Then I have to start calling all the people on the waiting list for family photos in the poppies.

this is actually a client, not my family. Ironically, though, I do have 2 girls and 2 boys in my family, and they are quite close in appearance to this family!

 

[Lacey Anne]

Very cute! I bet they line up for this shoot! What a background! I'd like see a little more color pop on these, but it's JMO.

 

[Lyncca]

These are great! Here it is bluebonnets that everyone goes nuts over every year

 

[kellylindseyphotography]

To me, the expressions all looked pretty forced and they don't look comfortable in front on the camera. It looks like you informed them "smile!" and then did. I could be wrong, but it looks like not a genuine expression among them.

You have the same dead center composition in nearly all of them.

What i think you did right for all of them is lighting. I can tell you carefully chose the positions and location.

I'm guessing you have a lot of PP work to do and just chose to show us the unedited versions, or else I would comment on things that need to be done in PP. I'm going to assume you know those things already though.

 

[twocolor]

To me, the expressions all looked pretty forced and they don't look comfortable in front on the camera. It looks like you informed them "smile!" and then did. I could be wrong, but it looks like not a genuine expression among them.

You have the same dead center composition in nearly all of them.

What i think you did right for all of them is lighting. I can tell you carefully chose the positions and location.

I'm guessing you have a lot of PP work to do and just chose to show us the unedited versions, or else I would comment on things that need to be done in PP. I'm going to assume you know those things already though.

Wow!

I have to say that on their smiles, not many people have mastered that whole give me a fake smile that looks real. When your shooting a family portrait session, you have to get every member of the family looking at you and smiling at the same time. Of course I'm going to tell them to smile. You have to. Mom isn't going to order any otherwise.

I agree with you on the centering thing. Although in my defense, the cropping that happens when you enlarge photos, demands empty space above and below the client. Which is what I planned on for the big group shot. Some of the others probably could have been composed differently.

Yes, I did carefully plan my location and time of day to get the lighting I wanted. Like I said between the three years I've shot at this location, I do 5-7 shots a year. One a day for the week they're in bloom. So thanks for noticing.

As for PP, I'd love it if you took a gander at these. I really like the stuff you've posted and would love to see what you would do with these!

 

[kellylindseyphotography]

You don't have to get a "fake smile that looks real". You get real smiles, and its your job as a pro to know how to do that. The large groups, you take what you can get mostly. A trick with large groups is to just act like a dancing idiot.... makes the kids laugh and the parent laugh. Whatever it takes.

With the single images, you can't cop out and say you couldn't do anything other than to say "smile". It's your job to know HOW to get real smiles if it takes you 50 shots to get em.

In any case, I agree about the cropping that will happen, but again, you can still have negative space on the left and right that can contribut to an image. Such as, when I see this field, I can imagine all of them holding hands and having a straight line throughout the middle of the composition. This is not dead centered, yet adds a lot to the picture.

Or as you did in 5 and have a pyramid sceme, which works nice. There are many, many options besides dead center.

I believe that many of these are good images, but lack compositionally and emotionally. I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings, I swear I am not. I hope it's not coming too harsh and that you take this all constructively. I am trying to help you so that you have things to think of the next time you shoot. I personally love when someone is this straightforward to me but if you are not likeing it, please tell me so and I will stop Here's one play I did, (quick, 5 mins) might need to fix their skin tones and other things.

 

[twocolor]

To be honest, I really don't like the look of this one. It seems to "cartoonish". I think it lost some of its realistic feel. Besides saturation, I'm guessing you played with the contrast right?

I just don't think that this is my "style" of a portrait.

Oh, BTW I would rather have someone give it to me straight. I may grumble for awhile, but I grumble more because no one likes to think that they're not perfect - know what I mean!

I've said before, that I'd rather get hard critique than no response at all.

 

[kellylindseyphotography]

To each their own As long as you recognize that the photo does need post processing work, as every photo SOOC does. A simple defog (unsharp mask, and correction of levlels to get them out of their underexposure) would help immensly What I did above was very quick and my style, so of course your milage will vary. I'm glad you can take the CC in stride, it says a lot about you!

 

[LizzyQ]

Hey Two Color.. where are these? I live in SLC...

 

[Alpha]

Kelly. Chill with the vignetting!

Anyway,

The poppies need more red and the foliage needs more green. This will throw the color balance off on your subjects, which are currently too yellow but will need increased saturation to match the background. Get the flowers right, then correct the subject saturation and contrast to match. Mask if you have to.