Well I guess that’s relative to some people… but London to Paris is just a short Train Ride. They gotta go while they’re in Europe at least a couple of times, so why not while they have their ol buddy in town (me) and I speak the language and I have a camera and they could do for a photoshoot.
We’re just having fun, relaxing, playing the tourists but in the end it’s about the same cost for them as a typical family shoot anyway.
Not really that it was a typical family shoot. Mainly I just captured moments (which I love) but it was a tad chilly for them to unbundle the young one.
But as we bounded from one metro stop to the other we got some great pictures.
I think they’re real telling of their trip and what went down and what it was really like, and heck what these two are really like. Kinda raw and real.
With the territory of walking from place to place, I packed light and we didn’t do any fancy lighting for almost all the shots… course it woulda been fun. But as I (and I’m sure others) always say: Pick your Battles.
This kid LOVED holding onto that metro ticket (Both pictures… though more evident on the right)
This Kid pretty much just napped. (I’m pretty sure his name is not Bjorn)
another variation of the post I published last night.
I told them if Jeff would help drive during my Wedding shoot that i’d be more than happy to do family pictures.
Things just happen all the time in life and it’s up to us sometimes to just be there… and to see it for what it is and capture it beautifully.
I knew it would be awesome when I took it. I was just sitting there finishing up my crepe not feeling like moving… but I had the right lens and a compulsive desire to ALWAYS be shooting when I SEE what deserves attention.
To him it was probably just another in a never ending series of events and interactions with his child. But I thought of it a bit singularly and differently.
PARIS – Crepes – Fun stories of mistaken meal ordering – Cold – Fussy children – The task of calming the child – Restaurant
I mean it brings back a lot of memories to me… I’m sure it does the same for him.
Not to mention the kid who years down the line gets to look back and see the adventure he went on he doesn’t remember and how his dad loved him.
Stay tuned tomorrow a post on the rest of the images from my meanderings around Paris with this family.
When I made the decision to cut back on the number of weddings I made a decision to put more work in the weddings I do.
One of the things I started doing was double checking my edits, then triple checking and each time finding quick fast improvements that would make the pictures way better.
CHECK OUT THIS NEW AWESOMENESS -
(More about it in Posts to come)
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SELECTING
After those looks I would go back through and select pictures I think would look great in black and white. Now days after working on thousands of these I can often spot the picture that will look best in B&W but sometimes I have to double check by converting it quickly and then converting it back.
In Lightroom the shortcut is “V” you can check to see if it has potential if it does make a virtual copy and then make the second copy the one that will be B&W the shortcut for virtual copies is ctrl+’
I often find myself selecting the pictures with the most emotion and usually my favorite pictures are given that second B&W look.
One extra benefit
An extra benefit from turning pictures B&W is that going through the pictures is yet one extra look at them. And when they’re in B&W you often pay so much closer attention to exposure levels because colors (specially bright colors) are not playing with your perceptions anymore. I’ll therefore turn B&W see what needs to be done and make corrections before I create the virtual copy… so i don’t have to do things twice. B&W is also great for paying closer attention to making things sharper.
HISTORY
In times past I would tell my clients I could turn their pictures B&W but hardly anyone made reqeusts of me… I took that as a compliment that I was practically perfect. haha But in the end I figure they just don’t know what it might look like, and they might choose pictures that don’t look good in B&W
A little more history is that when I first started photography I wasn’t a fan of B&W… it seemed like cheating to me. I’ve grown to love it and recognize for me it’s spot in my work.
CREATING GALLERIES
Another fun thing I’m doing is creating a gallery of all the images from the session that I converted to B&W.
Usually I leave a copy in color because it often never fails that you do Only B&W and they’ll ask for the color… so if I just have B&W I either think the colors weren’t anything special or I was lazy and might pay for it later, it was probably an afterthought picture anyway.
To create a gallery of just B&Ws in Smugmug you’ll have to start in Lightroom (or similar program) keyword every B&W … I use the keyword “bw”
How to select all B&W the fastest… go to gallery go to the filtering options > select metadata options > change one of the columns to “treatment” > you’ll see you can filter by B&W > select them all > keyword them “bw” > then export > then upload to smugmug
In SmugMug: Add a new gallery seperate from the gallery that contains ALL pictures from the event the B&W gallery will be seperate with nothing to upload > when you get to the uploading section instead select Make Smart Gallery > select the from gallery option and select the gallery with all the pictures then add another qualifier and use that one to select by the keyword > then make sure to select the option that requires ALL requirements otherwise it will select all pictures from that gallery and all B&Ws you have on smugmug.
Anyway check to see if it works and then you have a gallery of all your B&W from that shoot
