Outtakes

A few weeks ago, we did a short photo shoot with Lukey and Kenzie and I wrote a blog entry about that evening previously.  I ended up with a lot of great photos but I thought I would share a few of the outtakes here and briefly describe the problems or difficulties we had in getting a good shot.

This first one shows what happened when I tried to use a reflector to bounce some of sunlight that was shining brightly behind them onto Lukey and Kenzie's darkened faces.  They had the sun at their backs so they were very much silhouetted against the bright, colorful background.  My camera is capable of capturing a lot of data in a larger dynamic range than most cameras but adding some light to their darkened faces would make things better for light, shadow, contrast, color, and clarity...  this reflector was a tried and true way to brighten up darkened faces...  or so I thought...  

No matter which type of reflector I used, the kids could not keep their eyes open!  I first tried using the reflector that would work best for me, the photographer...  a gold reflector which creates a nice warm golden glow (seen above).  That proved to be too bright for their sensitive eyes and they couldn't do anything other than squint or close their eyes!  

Then I tried a silver one which produces a colder light but at least this light would be on their faces.  It was still too bright for them and I still got nothing but goofy squinting from them.  

Then I tried a translucent white reflector.  This translucent reflector allows some of the light to go through the reflector so it will only bounce some of the light back onto their faces.  I had really hoped that this would be a happy medium.  This still didn't work.  They were unable to keep their eyes open.  

I decided to just deal with the darkened faces later when developing and editing the final photos and that seemed to work okay.  It would have been far better to reflect some light on their faces with a reflector but a powerful flash could work if done right.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring any flashes or umbrellas with me because I wanted to keep this photo shoot as simple as possible.  Seeing the cringey squints on their faces when I scroll through these photos is pretty funny though so I decided to include one of these squinty photos here.  

In this next photo, below, I was trying to get Kenzie to sort of flick her dress to show a bit motion in this flowing gown she was wearing...  she sort of did what I was hoping to see but I didn't want the attitude that we see on her face.  Since this is a rather typical smirky face we often see from Kenzie, I decided to share this outtake here as well...  (I also didn't like that I had cut off her feet as well as the flowers she is holding in her hand so this one is a definite outtake.)

Prior to heading out of the house for a nearby field, I printed out a few sheets of many possible poses to be used by boys and girls when modeling.  My intention was to have them look over these sheets of poses and choose a few that they felt would be fun to do.  Also, when handing them these sheets of poses, I was hoping for them to practice some of these poses so they would be ready when they were in front of the camera.  I should point out that, other than circling a few of the poses that I felt would be good for this particular photo shoot, I really had not studied these sheets of poses myself.  I wanted them to do this.  (Another one of my mistakes.)

So, now, hours later, we are out there in this field and I ask where the sheets of poses are so we can look at them together.  All I get from them is "I don't know" in unison.  Apparently, after handing them these sheets, they simply laid them down and went about other things.  Now, none of us had much of an idea of how to pose in an interesting way.  Later, near the end of our session, I asked Lukey to see if he can remember one of the interesting poses and this shot, below, is what he gave me...  

While I was working with Lukey in a different field on the other side of the road, I noticed Kenzie twirling round and round so I captured a few shots of her in motion...

Overall, it was a good photo shoot and we ended up with a bunch of really nice photos.  That being said, it is always fun to go back and look at some of the more goofy shots that made the session memorable.