It was impossible to go outside and take pictures this winter. The 4 feet of constant snow really put a damper on Pat and me going on our usual photography excursions. So what did we do? Read, watched photography courses and went to WPPI.
To our friends we barely saw all winter: we were hidden in our home teaching ourselves how to shoot manually, how to pose people naturally, how to use lighting correctly, how to brand ourselves, how to market our business and how to make funny comments on Facebook. Maybe I was already a pro at the last one…
You see, we have a distinct vision in our minds of what photographs define Pat and I as a couple: fun, light, natural and easy. A little crazy too but I’ll keep that part out of our brand. We constantly laugh and don’t take ourselves too seriously. So how do we turn that into a portfolio?
Practice.
I looked at the pictures I loved from photographers I admired and didn’t even know where to begin on achieving that look while putting our own spin on top of it. I love backlit photographs in natural sunlight but I was using my camera on aperture priority. Mistake numero uno. Take your cameras off Av people, make the move to Manual. I wrote a blog on how I learned this but never published it…I was thinking it may be too basic but I may post it anyway.
So what happened?
Pat and I are completely different portrait photographers than we were in the Fall. I used to pride myself on teaching myself my camera but there’s so much more than just the settings. We quickly learned this when starting photographing people.
Yesterday, I made Pat go out around 5:45 when the sun was beginning to go down. Since we don’t have another engagement session for a few weeks, I wanted him to take a few pictures to finally put everything we’ve learned into use. That and I needed a new default picture of myself.
Here’s what we came away with, exactly what I had in my mind for months. Nice light, open aperture, fun and exactly us captured in a few small moments. Plus, Pats photography skills and my modeling skills are out of this world….until you see the outtakes of me jumping around like a six year old on pixi stix.
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