What a Beautiful Baby!

Hi All!

Well, what a great week it has turned out to be. Up here in the North the concern around the middle of October is what is tomorrow going to look like.  Are we going to have snow?, or...are we going to have snow?  We have been very fortunate in what we have been getting. Warm weather has been here all month. I don't feel like I am jinxing this, as we usually get snow in early November, so I am ready to have people blame me for the snow if it comes.

Anyway, I was shooting the other day. It was a family photoshoot and the weather was great!  We got through about 5 locations and we wanted to do some individual shots of their beautiful baby.  I was getting concerned about the changing weather and thought that we could use their fabulous living room.  I set up three SB-800 flashes.  One on a stand, one on the floor reflecting off my gold reflector and one in the hands of one of the proud parents.  My main light is the light coming off the reflector (Baby left) and my fill flash was on the stand pretty close to centre.  I used the parent to hold a flash head above and behind camera left of the baby to create a bit of separating light.  Main light was balanced to my f stop and the fill light was 1 2/3 under, and my highlight light was 1 under.

This baby was awesome to shoot.  She loved to look into the camera and always had a great look. After I finished I brought the picture into Viveza through Aperture and darkened the background around the baby and lightened up some of the shadows in the eye sockets. I then brought the image into photoshop and use the distort>lens correction filter and added a vignette on top of my original layer. I backed off on the opacity of this layer to create the above effect.

Specs: Nikon D700, Su-800, three SB-800s, f/3.5 @ 1/60 s, 70-200 mm @ 125.0 mm, ISO equivalent 100.

Enjoy!

Family portrait in the fall

www.LanceBurnsPhotography.com

Hi All!  I have a great tutorial to share with you all today. I was out this weekend with one of my favorite families. After shooting their wedding last fall we thought we would update the family portraits!  We had a nice casual walk and when the moment struck we took pictures. Some were posed, but most were not. The image we are looking at was one that was kind of posed.  I really, really liked the background and asked the family to slowly walk through the open space.  Well, as they were walking a happy accident occurred.  The birds just started moving in.  Wave after wave in a very short time.  I loved it!  After getting the images into photoshop and Nik Colour Efexs,  I was able to produce this stunning image.  I love how private a moment we see.  The child is looking back at the birds and the parents are having their own tranquil moment.  Amazing in the story that it tells.

Well, I hope you enjoy the tutorial and realize that images are sometimes captured and sometimes created.  You can decided for yourself what this one is.

Until next time!  All my best and enjoy!

Family shot

www.LanceBurnsPhotography.com

This weekend I was out shooting a family. Now, I had picked out a nice little spot by some water that was rather serene and tranquile. A spot that I thought the family would like. Well, when we got chatting, the mom indicated that she had a great spot all picked out and the colour of the trees were full of autumn. I asked where it was and she told me it was on the side of a road in the city. No big deal, but this is one of the busiest roads in our city and the traffic was loud and constant and the ability to communicate was almost nil. I took this challenge and luckily had my wife, er, assistant with me. As we set about getting ready to shoot the scene, I noticed that we did have great autumn colours but we couldn't communicate over the noise. I actually had to have my assistant stand halfway between me and the family so we could rely information! 

All in all, we captured some fantastic images of this beautiful family. It is worth noting that it is very, very difficult to get a 2 year old to smile on command. The girl was NOT willing to smile this way so I had the kids run around for a bit and captured a candid image of her smiling and plopped that head into this family shot. Not to bad eh? I also started to use the Viveza plug-in for Aperture. What a great plug-in. This allowed me to spark-up the image before I did any work in photoshop. VERY Impressed!

Specs: Nikon D200, 70-200mm @ 200 mm, F/5.0 @ 1/90

Enjoy!