I've had this session on stand by for so long it's almost criminal, thank you to Avery's family for being patient. I sort of sped through the last few shoots and getting orders ready for a bunch of them that I burnt my brain out, and got a cold. My brain finally turned back on this week. And of course with all that elapsed time, I was feeling the pressure to really deliver. I hope these do the trick.
Avery thought sticking her tongue out was far better than smiling, or laughing, or looking pleasant. Making silly faces, totally in. Well I guess it beats past shoots with her where it was all petrified and two smiles. The lighting by these tulips was really harsh, we were out at midday and in some of the shots it just did things to her skin with shadowing that I wasn't a big fan of. My solution was a bit of a glowing overlay, and it was a fine line to tread between softening out the harsh midday sun and making it too hazy. But then in some of them she looked just like an ethereal little angel tiptoeing through the tulips, each photo I went back and forth on how much processing, I literally took two days on just these photos. Yup, obsess much?
Then I just decided to stop fiddling with them, she's darn cute no matter if I overprocessed them or not. Besides this digital darkroom stuff is still new to me, so if they are a bit overdone for your taste I'll take no offense! I still insist that you cannot deny she's darn cute.
I had a very difficult time collaging/storyboarding this shoot. We had so many spots we shot at, each with their own lighting and composition and then even within the locations the shots didn't cooperate as nicely as would have liked, but I still got some things I was happy with. The one at right is one picture from wach location, kind of a full shoot collage and it turned out better than I thought it would.
Oh the daffodils. If you remember from the sneak peek, out of respect to mama, who is pregnant, we sort of parked illegally to get these. taking them is not the problem, parking our cars right next to them was. So I got a lot less from this location than I could have. You get some funny ones like Avery chasing her mom out of the flowers and then the "but I don't want to stand here it's creepy." face.
Of course I had just found my angle that I super fell in love with as the ranger showed up to tell us to move the cars. I come there a lot so I wasn't bold enough to keep shooting while they waited for us to move our cars, and Avery would have bailed if mom had moved her car while I tried to take some more. But we did get these two gems, the one at right, top 3 from this shoot, I "heart" this photo.
Another pair collage, a
diptych, it's what all the cool kids are doing, and I so want to be a cool kid. Don't you feel smarter now? You learned a new word that's relatively useless outside photography!
These two are just to prove that Avery did let me take pictures of her in the waterfall garden, she's been a bit stubborn about that, but I'm wearing her down, slowly.
That's an almost smile in the waterfall garden, you are so busted kid! And how can you not love the glowing crown of backlit hair in these? She already looks like a little angel anyway!
Variety is the spice of life and we decided to try a new spot in the park and see what we could do. The best part about this little meadow was the park bench that had almost 50 feet of clearance on any side. It was in the middle of the meadow, no people to walk by and distract her and I could get at any angle I wanted. Again, with the tongue, don't worry you haevn't seen the last of it.
I don't even remember where her mom was, she was next to her on the bench for a lot of this location, but what I do remember was after I took this first picture I hissed through my teeth, "Don't move, she's perfect, I want to get a few more." Last time it was her
random unposed crossing of her feet sitting on the stone bench, this time it was the perfectly overlapped hands on the side of the bench. I'm not kidding, the kid does this all by herself.
Like it or not, this first one, she was looking straight at her mom. It was the most adorable exchange between her and mama. Her left hand is even on her hip but I had to crop it out since I took this over her mom's shoulder and that part was less than picture perfect. The one at right is Avery thinking "If I walk back at them one more time, really slow, and really cute, maybe the picture lady will get whatever it is she is rambling about and let me go play somewhere else."
And so we did, to molest some more unsuspecting flowers, before the rangers found us again.
For this series we were under an evergreen stand near the parking lot, she was sitting on her mama's leg which I was able to crop around, and she just looked up at me. It was like
this picture all over again, and I love me that picture from her 18 months shoot. Her eyes caught the most amazing reflection off of the cloudless sky and the overarching trees, oh and me, hovering over her. Daddy's going to need a very big stick, unless we just hammer out the pre-nup for my Josh now, really I think it's the sensible thing.
Oooo I caught you smiling again, but then you had to go back to the tongue. You are still cute. the first one she was literally straddling her mom sitting chest to chest and leaning backwards, it's a unique angle to say the least.
A little pairing, and then she let mom's lap have a rest and got up to explore our little secluded alcove. It was a very serious entrancing spot of the park.
Show me the MONEY!! Thank you Avery, you made me work for an hour for it, and like always right when we were about to wrap things up, you gave me the best smiles of the day. I can't decide which one I like better. Under the shade her skin looks so creamy smooth it's not fair.
I loved how rosey her lips were, almost the exact shade of her shirt, when she wasn't making silly faces.
Just a little suggested set for a Four 4x6 matted frame. Let me know if you want to order the monogram red 4x6, it should go well with any combination of pictures from the shoot as it is a color swatch from her shirt.
Everything here is sized 8x10. Portraits available in 8x10, 5x7, 4x6, and wallet (croppings will differ slightly from proofs shown). Collages, if you want them other than 8x10 I make no guarantees they will look the same or in the case of teh one collage with pictures from the whole shoot that I can even get it to go into a 5x7 or smaller. If I am unable to properly resize I will keep the size ratio the same and add black fill to take the leftover space around the inset 8x10 sized collage, I can show you on some 4x6's I have.
That's it, hope it was worth the wait.
p.s. again excuse any typos, here I am at 1 am publishing again! what is it with me and the 1-2 am publishing? oh yeah, sleeping children.
