Mike & Chasity E-Session

[valentinephoto]

I've never done an engagement session before (I do boudoir photography), but my good friends approached me about doing one for them so I figured it's good practice.

The day we decided to do it was really nice and sunny. I live an hour and a half away from them, and as I was driving down to their location it started to get cloudy. Well that just continued :mad: So I had about an hour to shoot before we lost all light.

Not to mention we were in a cow pasture for some of the pics (no cows around at the time) and then all of a sudden they started to charge at us and were stampeading down the hill towards us making these grunting sounds :lol: I don't think I've ever ran so fast in my life.

Anyhow, we're doing another e-session in a few weeks so I wanted to get some C&C on these so I know what to look out for next time.

Full set of pics here: http://www.theburhansfamily.com/cm.htm (5 pages)

And I uploaded 2 of my personal favs just for example. Please look at the full gallery though to give me some C&C.

Thanks!!

[bbvdm]

I like them, but maybe think about rule of thirds in both could make the images more compelling. Also, a nice cloudy day usually makes for nice diffused light to shoot in. I think if it was real sunny, your pics may not have looked as good. #2 is funny.

[mckc]

yes bbvdm is correct. The clouds act as a diffuser to the sun. If you would have stuck them in the middle of a field in the bright sun, the lighting would be VERY harsh. I like the first image although I am not sure I like how they are looking two different places. It almost looks as if the are looking at a different photographers. I also looked through some of the photos on the link you posted and I like some of them except you tried to crop into them too much. The crops look like awkward sizes and from my experience, you want to crop into sizes they can make into prints like 8x10 (which it looks like you did a couple..maybe) or just crop a 4x6 ratio so that way you don't lose the original ratio of the photo.

[mai_lin]

I really like the first one in row 10... but almost all of them look out of focus for the main subject? Maybe its my computer but I don't see anything that screams 'tack sharp'. But I love the ideas you had - piggy back riding ones are super cute and I love the ones by the trees too.


Jen D.

[valentinephoto]

Thanks for the responses!

Yes, some where cropped to 8x10, but others not so much. I figured I have the originals and really, she wanted to see what different effects I could do in PS on them so she could decide what she'd like best. She'll be coming over after the next e-session to sit down with me and we'll go through the ones they want for prints (I'm making them an album as part of their wedding gift).

I had a hard time getting them in focus. I have vison problems (I know, a photographer without a good eye, lol) but my vison problems come from my health issues and that's all getting resolved as I'm approaching treatment for my condition. So a lot of them they were moving too fast for me to focus in time. I kept trying to tell them "walk slowly from here to there" and when they did their kissing, it was like they were racing. A little odd actually on my end - as I said, I'm used to shooting boudoir, so my subject is normally in one pose and I can get really sharp photos. Another thing I noticed is when I uploaded them to the web, I had to resize them and I lose some of the sharpness to them.

All were shot with a fixed 50mm 1.4

I was going to pull out another lens, but I really love that one and figured I had time to use the other one at the next shoot.

Next time I will do my best to do the rule of thirds and see if I can get them to slow down slightly with their movements (for my sake). They were really nervous, even though they've known me for years (well, she's known me a lot longer). They don't normally do pictures.

Thanks again for the C&C!! It's much appreciated!