It’s that time of year! There is a chill in the air, the leaves on the trees are long gone, and people on the streets are humming Christmas music! It warms my heart! I always make sure to enjoy this time of year with a warm drink in my hand! To top it all off, I received a request for Winter portraits! I was pretty excited about it, because it’s been some time since I’ve been called to do winter portraits! I used to do portraiture, years ago. I get calls now and then to do various photographic jobs, and I have to say that this was a very enjoyable one!
If you were thinking this dashing couple was Michael and I, you would be very wrong. I would love to trick you into thinking we were young, lean and full of energy, but no. Those days are long over! These two are both about 18 and freshly graduated from High School. They are ridiculously cute, and so very much in love!
As if these two weren’t cute enough as it is, they have a very sweet dog! Wiley is her name. She was very excited to be at a local park with us. The squirrels were very tempting for her, but she kept it together and gave us some very adorable photos! Such a great model!
One of the first things you want to consider, when taking good photographs, is proper equipment. Many photographers swear by Canons or Nikons. I have never understood the hype over the “photographer” name brand. I have always favored a Sony camera. They are excellent quality and reliable. Not only are they great cameras, but they also bought out the camera brand Minolta. This means they have the same lens mount. Good quality and used Minolta lenses can be purchased from Ebay for unbeatable prices and they work perfectly with a Sony camera. I find great deals on outstanding lenses just because they aren’t Nikon or Canon brand. I will always stick with Sony.
I quickly did a search on Amazon for one of these cameras, and found this one on sale for only $398 from almost $600! Such a great deal!
The next thing I do before every photo-shoot is my research. Any photographer that says they reek awesomeness… they lie. I’m sure they have their shining moments, but a photographer that doesn’t do his research before a shoot is just not prepared. A quick and easy way to do this is a simple Google image search or Pinterest search. Type in what you are going to photograph followed with the words “professional portraits”. For this photo-shoot I did several searches that looked like this: engagement professional portraits, family with dog professional portraits, winter portraits, etc.
I asked them to do the same and pick out some images that they liked. The goal is to have photographs they love, so finding out what style they like is a necessity. Mimicking some of those images guarantees at least a few images I know they will love.
Once you’ve got the proper equipment, done your research and decided what poses you want, get out there and do it. At this point it just takes practice, observation and a whole lot of fun.
The last step is to edit your images. It’s a must. The goal is to make slight edits to it. Your viewer should never be distracted by the editing you do. It’s just like when a women wears make up. It should be applied lightly and compliment her natural beauty. Once it’s on too thick it makes her look awful. Most girls are told at a young age that the trick is to applying make-up is to make it look like you’re not wearing any at all. The same goes for your photographs.
Photoshop is ideal for this, but with how high the price is it’s not always ideal for the average or casual photographer. There are several free and online ways to edit your images. The first is PicMonkey and the other is Pixlr.
I have enjoyed sharing this beautiful couple with you. If you have some creative winter portraits that you’d like to share, please let me know!
Merry Christmas Laurel!
Merry Christmas!