These were from a family shoot last weekend. I really prefer to shoot outdoor family photos, but the weather just doesn’t  allow for it in Oregon during the rainy months. One of the other primary reasons for my preference though is that it really is a pain to set up my studio lighting for every session. I envy the photographers that have studios with their strobes set up and ready to go, quite literally, at the the flip of a switch. What makes it even more difficult is that I offer to set up my gear at customers houses. I’m really only taken up on this offer when kids are involved, because it is so much easier to bring the photographer in rather then pack up and head out to the studio. Now, all that being said, I think you get better results when the kids are comfortable at home.  This was a fun session. These two are six years apart, just like my brother and I. Oh the times ahead of them…

-

I’m ready to confess; I enjoy engagement photography the most. Don’t get me wrong, all genres have their advantage, but all-in-all engagement sessions always seem to put me in a great mood.  It’s probably because the one facet of photography that I love the most is capturing emotion. Every week I look through the top 500 associated press photos from the news because so many of them convey a strong sentiment.

Ariel, Ben and I met up in the South Park Blocks by Portland State University area for their engagement session. I was excited to shoot with Oregon’s Fall in full swing as my backdrop. All it takes around here to turn Fall into fell is a good wind storm. There’s a good chance these leaves will be reduced to a  brown paste in a week, so we were all thankful for the nice weather. The last photo was taken in the music hall on campus where Ben wanted to take some shots since he spends a lot of time there as a music major. Great idea!  Best wishes to Ariel and Ben, I think they make  a great couple!

I’ve been using my flashes a lot  lately as a result of cloudy weather and earlier sunsets.  This weekend I wanted to try to stay away from the flashes if possible, so  I scheduled this quick family shoot for 4pm thinking we would have enough light for some outside shots. However, I forgot Daylight Savings ended Sunday morning which pushed the light back to what was the equivalent of 5pm! I thought I was screwed, but in the last few moments of daylight the clouds broke on the horizon and we got about 3 min of soft setting sun. I had to fight the urge to take the easy way out which would have been simply pointing them into the sun and shooting. Instead I used it as a back light and used my flash to fill in on the front side. This is something I probably wouldn’t have thought about doing a year ago…