Grasses in Winter

tri-x 400

Breastfeeding in Real Life Series | Pumping

Because, for a lot of people, breastfeeding involves this.

A Quick Tip about Black and White Photography

In color photography you can use subtle variations in, well, color to show the shape and definition of someone’s face. In black and white if the colors have the same tone they will end up the same shade of grey. In someone’s face that can lead to a face that looks flat and featureless.

The best example I have of this in the playsilk cloak my daughter is wearing this this image. It’s a rainbow. Notice how it all looks like the same, even shade of grey? That’s because all the colors have the same values.

I say this all the time in critiques. How do you avoid ending up with a face of even grey? Directional light.

Here, with the light coming in from the side, it shapes his face and uses shadow to bring definition to his features.

Heart Baby

For Valentine’s Day, a little girl born with a hole (or two) in her heart who has thrived thanks to her parent’s devoted care, sitting in a shape that rather resembles a heart.

She’s still healthy. Love can move the world.

Button links to I Heart Faces blog.

Free Photoshop Warm/Vintage Action

This is a very simple and straightforward action using 3 adjustment layers. I make no guarantee that it will work in your version of Photoshop; it works in mine but I am not a professional action writer and thus make no attempt at universal compatibility.

Email me for information on my photoshop editing training. The next webinar is February 18th, 2012.

Before:

After:

DOWNLOAD ACTION HERE

Girl in Hat | Clothing in Portraits

I don’t talk a lot about clothing in portrait sessions until I am working directly with a client but nothing you can easily control will set the mood for your final images as much as clothing. I love to work with clothing that has a slightly old-fashioned, sweet look to it for little girls. Most little girls adore playing dress up and these kinds of dresses make them feel special, and help them engage in the fun of pictures, as well as giving your portraits a gentle, dreamy polish. “I look like a French girl!” this little one exclaimed when she put on this dress.

Failure

I wrote this originally for a workshop I was teaching, and have shared it on a message board since then, and now here.

But when it comes down to making work that really sings, I don’t know if I can teach any of it. I don’t even know if I can do any of it half the time. It’s so much about failure, it’s so much about making pictures that are so utterly boring and overstated, you’re endlessly disappointed. And in that process you hopefully find something that draws you back and calls to you. – Larry Sultan

It’s really easy to take a competent photograph. Buy a digital SLR, shoot a lot, get people to tell you how you are messing up and in a year, maybe 2, you’ll be producing pictures that are in focus and properly exposed, your skin tones will be decent and your images will follow basic rules of composition.

It’s really hard to take a good photograph.

It’s rather like writing. Learning to write a complete sentence that follows standard grammar is easy. Even learning basic rhetorical forms is easy, though it takes a bit longer. But being a writer, having a voice, saying something interesting and saying it well, that’s trickier. There are a lot of variations on My High School Vampire Lover for every Charlotte’s Web.

So what do you do, once you can turn out 30+ tidily conventional images from every shoot? How do you get from “here’s your kid, in focus, looking at the camera, and look how shiny her eyes are” to an image that moves not only people related to the subject but strangers as well?

You fail.

You push yourself out of your comfort zone over and over again and screw it up so badly you want to kick yourself. You mangle it. You make really, really awful images. You back up. You get closer. You copy people whose work you like in order to deconstruct what they are doing that speaks to you and then see if you can duplicate that element in your own pictures. You get in your head and ask what you are trying to say anyway. You get out of your head and shoot every day whether you are inspired or not. You flail around like an idiot. You try new stuff. You fail. Repeatedly. And then you don’t, at least a little. You fail less. And then a little less.

What can I say?

Farmer’s Market | Connecticut Holga Photographer

Snow Princess 2012

A number of people have asked how I edit these kinds of images – please contact me if you are interested in setting up an editing tutorial.

Fence