Fall mini sessions are here! Book your session for a quick and easy way to get beautiful portraits for holiday cards or gifting! Limited time slots available for these shorter sessions.
I got together earlier this summer with some Connecticut photographers and there was much shooting of one another’s children, as children will often be more compliant for a stranger than for their own mother. This is why your babysitter gets your kids to sleep with no fussing and they demand 5 cups of water, 2 stories, a monster search and 3,489 kisses from you. I shot with film the whole day, and one of these days I’ll manage to get that post written where I talk about WHY I like film so much.
If you ever think to yourself, “You know, self, I’d really like all the other mothers at the playground to stare at me like I am a total lunatic” I have some tips.
1. Leave the DSLR at home. Everyone has one now, they all know what they are and they are sizing up your lens. Is that a 70-200 in your bag or are you just happy to see me?
2. Instead, bring out a toy camera. Make sure to load the film – what is this film thing you speak of? – at the picnic table. The medium format film will get an extra odd look as it doesn’t look like the film people remember. Then, pull out your roll of gaff tape and tape the sucker up.
3. Lie on the ground slightly in front of the swing set so you can shoot up. Try not to get kicked in the face – it’s best to be back a little bit.
OK, so you bought the DSLR. It’s big. But you are still getting the underexposed pictures at the beach where your kid looks like she’s standing in a deep dark shadow while the ocean looks bright and beautiful behind her. This is starting to annoy you. What to do?
Part 1: Take the camera off auto, put it in manual and learn to read the in-camera meter (or buy a separate meter or get very very good at eyeballing it). Otherwise, you have a very expensive point and shoot.
When you look in the view finder you’ll see a grid thus:
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The one in the middle is “correct” exposure, but for close ups of pale skin you actually want the slider a bit towards overexposure because some people are just whiter than the percentage of grey that the camera uses to determine “right”.
Part 2: Once you are in Manual get a stuffed animal or an apple or anything less mobile and more patient than a child and start taking lots of pictures, changing the ISO, f-stop and shutter speed settings for each one to see how the triangle of exposure changes the final picture.
ISO is how fast the film will record the picture. The higher the number, the faster the film. The lower the number, the crisper the picture will look.
F-stop is how wide your aperture is. The wider the aperture, the smaller the number. f/1.8 is a wider aperture than f/5.6. The wider the aperture the more light will be let in, the shallower the in focus area will be, and the more the background will be out of focus. It’s hard to nail your focus with anything smaller than 4.0 until you practice rather a lot.
Shutter speed is how long the camera lets in light. My hand is too shaky to handle anything below 1/125 th of a second. The loose rule of thumb is take the size of your lens (say, 50mm), double it (to 100) and make sure your shutter speed has that number as the lowest denominator (1/100).
Part 3: Practice with your kids on an easy lighting day. What’s easy? Overcast. When the sun is behind the clouds you won’t have to worry about shadows in their faces, bright sun patches behind them or backlighting.
I am scheduling two days of mini-sessions for the holidays. These are 20-30 minute short sessions geared directly to getting you one or two shots for holiday gifting and cards (and though printed cards are not part of the package I do have a selection of templates you can use to order cards should you so desire. The templates can be viewed HERE.)
Your mini-session includes:
| August 28th | September 25th | |
| West Hartford Center | Westmoor Park | |
| $350* | $495 | |
| Click HERE to reserve a time in August | Click HERE to reserve a time in September |
*Yes, it’s cheaper in August. No, you don’t get less stuff. I start to get very busy in late September and go flat out through the end of November so if you go early and aren’t tucked into my busiest time, you get a discount.
This was one of those childrens’ portrait sessions I was really grateful at the end it wasn’t my kids because there is simply no way I couldn’t have every single one of these. It was s fun mix of film – love that film look – and digital for these. I adore working with film and am always thrilled to have a client who appreciates the special feel of a film portrait!
Of course, my kids never actually cooperate like this. Mine aim more for the “running away from the camera as fast as my legs with shoes on the wrong feet will go” look. Since if they consistently gave me portraits like THESE my house would be wall-papered with photos perhaps I should be grateful.
Just my own girlie hanging out in a field in a tutu. This is another in my “kids via holga” series.
Just one from the A Day in the Life at the Cobb School. This was a full day of shooting, following this little Miss around her preschool as she washed windows, painted, prepared herself a snack, played with her friends, sang songs and more.
Your album should be ready in a few more weeks!
Now and again things happen at photography sessions that make one laugh, though usually not until a bit later after a glass of wine or two. A small sampling…
This sweetie is one of my Year in the Life babies. She started out small and now, well, see for yourself.
Make Sure YOU are in the Pictures
World Breastfeeding Week Poster
How to Take a Picture of a Toddler
All images are copyright by Stacie Turner Photography and may not be used without permission. Please contact me through my website for permission to use my photos.
