Maternity Portraits and Silhouettes

Saturday, I tried out a few new things: studio-style maternity photography and silhouettes. As you can see, both turned out pretty well! My model and her husband agreed to pose for silhouettes (something I've been doing location scouting for recently), and I agreed to try some studio-style maternity portraits.

First, we did the silhouettes at Alpharetta High School. It's an ideal location for this because the whole complex is built on levels. I stand down on one level while my models pose on the level above. That way, I shoot up from the bottom of the hill and get beautiful silhouettes against a setting-sun sky. I was inspired by a series of maternity silhouettes by Colorado-area photographer Barb Lattin at Perfectly Natural Photography. We belong to the same email group, and she gave some great tips on how to do silhouettes. Thanks, Barb!

The studio-style maternity portraits were an entirely different matter. I am not a studio photographer, so I don't own mono or strobe lights. However, I'm an avid listener of StudioLighting.net's LightSource podcast. So I've learned a lot about studio lighting and do-it-yourself set-ups from podcast episodes.

To create these shots, I knew we would need some powerful lights and a black background. So, Jacob and I rigged a lamp stand with 5 mini halogen lights! We then bounced the light off of a bedroom wall so that we wouldn't have harsh shadows behind the model. I also had to adjust the exposure compensation on the camera so that the charcoal-colored material we draped in the background would go completely black.

After an hour of shooting silhouettes, we spend the next two hours getting the rest of the shots. Whew! I have new respect for studio photographers. Not only was set-up time drawn out, but each shot took meticulous posing and each outfit change made for a longer shoot. Despite all this, my model and I had a great time, and we were delighted with the results.

Candid outdoor shoots are my real love however. They are fun and fast and spontaneous. In fact, I'm positively glowing from the praise a few of our clients blogged about on their sites. One mom wrote a whole description about our shoot on her 3 Cute Kids blog. (Check out more mom reactions from that shoot at Urban Adventures and Adam, Lisa, and Ellie.) Another mom posted some additional pictures from a family photo shoot I did the week before. I'm also seeing some of my work pop up on Facebook as clients take advantage of the low resolution image files I include on the CD for online sharing. When clients post their pictures online and tell others about us, it's about the best compliment we could recieve. Thank you!

Location Scouting

Today I went location scouting with my little guy after lunch and again after dinner while Jacob watched the baby for an hour. I'm always on the lookout for good spots to take photos, but lately I've been working on finding locations close by. That way, when clients ask if I know a good spot to take photos, I have a few that I know well and that are easy to get to.

I've been using Google Maps lately to do some initial decision-making on where to go. Google Maps has satellite, terrain, and street views that are quite accurate. From those, I try to find local ponds, trails, and other spots I wouldn't ordinarily see on a regular map. (The first two photos from this post are from a beautiful little trail and pond area I found this way.)

This afternoon's project was to find out what the Big Creek Overlook area looked like. On the satellite view, I could see a nice open area (rare in tree-covered Alpharetta), and I thought a field or an open area like that might look great in some photos. Well, when I got there, I found that it was a residential area. I really loved the look of the field I could see from the road though. So with baby in arms, I knocked on the owner's door and asked him if I could go down and take some pictures of it. "Knock yourself out," he said. The second two pictures are from this lovely area.

An artist friend of mine once asked me how I compose a photograph, and I've been thinking about that question again today. A photograph is a two-dimensional object, but you can create the illusion of three dimensions by including a foreground (slightly out-of-focus), middle ground (in focus and where the subject of your photograph will be), and background (blurred nicely by a wide aperture and long focal length). The third picture demonstrates the kind of composition I'm talking about.

Then again, there are times when you want your photograph to have that two-dimensional quality. After my initial success with some silhouettes, I'm excited to try them again. So, after dinner tonight, I scouted out some great spots for silhouettes at Alpharetta High School. Now all I need are some people to put in my new locations!