Beautiful Albums....

I've started offering albums to my clients and the first one came in this week and it looks great! The printing is nice and is printed on 100# paper. The black and white images are neutral with a slight warm tone which works great for portraits.





The most fun (and time consuming part) was creating the layouts. I try to tell a story with juxtaposition of the images. Each page is suppose to speak to each other, either as a continuation of a theme or as a counterpoint to the previous image...

Ta Da! Finally done!

Press the play button!

Well, my opus thus far for documentary family portraits is done. I shot about 20 gigs of images. Approximately 1600 RAW files. Of that, I did a first round edit to about 366 images. I had to pare down the 366 to 144 images for the slideshow.

Whew!

When you do an edit like that, everything comes into play. You measure carefully the value of each image, not only for its own weight, but also its relationship to other images. I think that's where the true art of editing takes place. It reminds me of this quote:

Perfection is achieved not when nothing more can be added, but when nothing more can be taken away.

An amazing experience....

I'm back from SLO. It was a long journey and a great weekend. I spent the weekend with the family I was photographing, documenting everything from when they first got up in the morning, to making pancakes, to playing in a creek behind their house, to reading under the tree on their front lawn, to putting the children to bed, etc.,

For me, it was a pretty intense and amazing experience. Intense, in that I had to be constantly aware, looking for where the light was best, waiting for just the right moment and watching my camera settings. In all honesty, I didn't really know how it would go over. I've shot several sessions like this with families before, but never to this length of time and in such close quarters. Luckily, the family I was with was very open and willing so it made my job easy.

The entire train ride over I tried to empty my mind and be open. I knew something like this would only be successful if I was fluid in the moment. If I tried to force shots or over direct, it would ruin the delicate balance of the situation.

I remember reading about Cartier Bresson, the great Magnum photographer, talking about his style. He said something to the effect that one must always place the camera between his shirt and his chest.

That is to say, you have to shoot with the heart.