Professional Business Portraits
A great professional business portrait will really help you stand out from the crowd. It is something that could be put on your website, linkedin, your printed advertising material, facebook page and etc. From this picture people will develop an opinion about you and will decide whether they want to do business with you.
We offer both studio and location based business portraits. We understand that your time is valuable so we are happy to come to your location, at your convenience to get the pictures you need. We can set up a backdrop so it looks like you are in the studio or we can use your own environmental background.
Do you have more than one person or staff that need pictures? For the most part this is covered in a single session fee, whether it is 1 person or 8-10 people.
Below are a couple of examples from a recent studio business portrait. We always like to get a couple of different looks for the business professional as needs change over time.
Black & White Pictures in digital world
Do you like B&W pictures? The B&W space is highly complex. Sometimes you can convert your digital pictures to B&W in the camera, but this really limits your options. You can also just desaturate the colors but this typically leaves an unsatisfying result. I used a Photoshop plug in called Silver Efex Pro or Color Efex 3.0 from Nik Software to create the images below. For each image I provide sort of my standard conversion and then an alternative to give you an idea of the diversity of things you can do in the B&W space.
I personally like B&W pictures because I feel it allows the viewer to look at the image with the clutter of color.
Fun Family Portrait
Many people think that colors need to be coordinated, hair done, and each individual in a family portrait needs to look perfect with a sparkling smile. While I think that is fine concept, I like to explore family portraits that are more real and expressive about the inidividual members in the family portrait. This means that everyone may not have a sparkling smile and most of the time, the clothes will not be coordinated as this is a more accurate reflection of who we are at any given moment in time.
This family portrait appears to be a casual snap shot. No coordinated clothing and some smiles and frowns and it may appear to be chaotic, but I wanted to do something that had a spontaneous feeling. This kind of portrait is kind of difficult to achieve: enough structure with a bit of irregularity. Planned chaos is one way to think about it.
The structured part of the picture include the lounge chairs evenly spaced with four individuals sitting. The two on the left are facing right and the two on the right are facing left, thus bringing your eye into the picture. The spouses are placed standing behind their husbands with aunts and grandchildren sprinkled around to fill the image space. Finally, the people are interspersed around the lower 1/3 line.
There is a story in this picture. First, it is a three generation picture. The family is together in a warm climate, but based on their tans, they probably don't live here the year around. They are visitors to a private swimming pool on a white beach with palm trees all around and a thatched roof shelter. Maybe they have been playing volley ball on the beach or just enjoying the sun lounging on the cots and playing in the water (see the floatie in the right of the picture), the towel on the far left and a couple of people are wearing swim suits. The sun has been bright (sunglasses). They are relaxed and happy, but who wouldn't be in such an idyllic place (Casa Mimosa, Isla Mujeres).
For the camera buffs, here are a few technical details. There are two light sources for the picture. First there is the sun behind and to picture right. This nicely lights the trees, roof, and beach, but casts a dark shadow across the people's faces. The second light is a SB800 camera right by about 3-4 feet and elevated above the camera by about 3 feet. The SB800 was triggered by a Mini TT1/AC3 on the camera and a FlexTT5 (both from Pocketwizard) on the SB800.
The camera was set to manual at an ISO 250, f5, 1/250 @ 28mm. These settings were selected to provide the best possible exposure of the sky and general environment with a shutter speed slow enough to allow for maximum contribution from the SB800 flash. SB800 flash power was manual and adjusted through a few test shots to get the lighting balanced.
My Favorites from 2012
2012 was a very busy and exciting year. While there was new technology, such as the Nikon 800 at 36MP, faster and better computers, thunderbolt drives with impressive speeds, I think the thing that will stand out for me are the wonderful people that I had the opportunity and privilege to photograph. This year I took over 40,000 pictures so if you don't see your picture here, please don't be disappointed. I had originally planned to have only 10 pictures and I may still get down to that, but at this point it is 32 pictures. There are many reasons why I may have included a particular picture. It might have been
the expression on the faces or what the picture shows,
it was strong in highlighting relationships,
it had great color or composition or,
I might have just really liked it without a particular reason (my prerogative)
Below are the pictures and you can view the full collection as a slideshow. Or you can click on the picture to link to a larger version of the picture and the remaining slideshow.
I like this picture for the very strong interaction between the mother and the child. Both have very true and wonderful smiles on their face it is clear that they are having a fun time together. The motion in her hair tells us that she is in motion and the child is laughing and enjoying this motion.
I like this picture because of a couple of things. First there is a strong engagement between the subjects and because with the building in the background we know it is an urban setting and there are flowers and trees in the foreground, sort of matching the flower in her hair. Did she pluck it from the tree and put it her hair to woo him?
I like this picture because of its simplicity and the subject has a wonderful pensive look and gorgeous eyes and expression. I would ask; "How could you not love this picture?"
This was a picture taken in a theater with red curtains. I back lite the curtains and had a single light to the right of the image lighting the subject. The strong face, the firm positioning of the hands and the black and white treatment make this a perfect author book cover picture of an authoer. Throughtful and strong come to mind as I look at this picture.
This is a studio portrait with a clean simple background. I like this picture because of its simplicity, the wonderful and easy smile of the subject and the lighting (although the client has a great face to light) with clean catch-lights and gentle short lighting.
This is a picture from an engagement session. The reason I have included this as one of my favorites is the wonderful interaction between the couple with her eyes fixed on her future husband and the dimensionality and reflection of the cityscape off of the Chicago Bean.
Another wonderful bride. Her face, attitude, outfit and location (Wilder Mansion in Elmhurst) seemed to fit a 1950 sort of scene. It was for this feeling that I converted the image to black & white. In addition I wanted to capture two things: her strength (with her arms holding the doors open) and her femininitiy with her legs crossing to form a soft balance point. I also like this picture because of her wonderful gentle smile.
I like this picture because it is all natural light and the subject has a relaxed pensive expression on her face that fits well with her leaning against the wall. She seems total absorbed in some distance activity that pleases her.
I will add more pictures to this page over time with comments, but please visit the slideshow to see all of my favorite pictures.
Family Portraits--Preconceived notions
There is a notion that a family portrait session is taking a picture of the whole family grouped together. For me, I view a family portrait session as an opportunity to take pictures of individuals, differing smaller groupings and the whole family. This results in a wonderful collection of images that the family will be able to use far into the future, whether they just want a picture of a particular person, or a particular combination of people, including all the members of the family.
Below is a family portrait session for holiday cards.
Groom's wedding party
When I am shooting a wedding, I always like to have at least two photographers shooting. I also like to try to do something a little bit different than the usual images, although timing and environment sometimes dictates what you can do. The two pictures below were taken nearly simultaneously, but from slightly different perspectives and I believe this greatly enhances the quality of the final set of pictures that the client receives. One of these I took while the other was taken by Lauren Lukacek of L Squared Photography. I have commented on the value of having two photographers before on my blog here.
Family Portraits
When I do family portraits, I like to provide the client with images that are classical as well as non-classical kinds of images. This makes the session a lot more interesting and provides the client with a rich picture resource. I am also now providing a stylist for sessions if clients are interested in developing unique kinds of pictures. This process encourages the client to provide input into the planning of the session.
The pictures below are examples of this diversity.
While this picture does not stray very far from the classical family portrait, it does not offer the sense of being clustered together, soldiers in line typical portrait. I like the image (minimal post processing) for several reasons. First, there is a strong three dimensionality to it with the daughters in the foreground, the parents behind but higher in the image, a bit out of focus suggesting a quiet very important role and then further back the warm autumn colors. In addition, the railing at each side brings to the image strong convergent lines, drawing your eye into the picture. Lastly, the expressions on the primary subjects strongly represent their individual personalities: one a bit shy and contemplative and the other spontaneous and a bit mischievous.
This image deviates more from the classical family portrait, but it is still a portrait. I like the image because it captures the strong sense of spontaneity in the family, both parents are looking into the picture and at the main characters (the daughters) that are along the left 1/3 line. This image also has a bit of three dimensionality to it with the rails running back and converging.
If you want to see a few more images from this session go to my family portrait gallery
Baby and mother pictures
One thing I like to do with baby sessions is to capture the relationship between the baby and their parents. Below is an example from a recent session that I feel is fun and really captures the intimacy of the relationship between the child and her mother.
In the picture below, I did something at the request of the client: shot against a black background. Typically, for a child, I would not do this kind of background, but was pleasantly surprised by how well the pictures turned out.
Dramatic and bold
When I do portrait sessions, I like to provide my client a spectrum of images. I will add a few more images to this particular blog over the next few weeks, but the picture below is one of my favorites. When ever I look at it, I think the caption should be 'Think Boldly' or 'Know your stuff' or 'Take no prisoners'
The picture was taken with just three lights (Einstein 640 controlled with PocketWizard MC2 and MiniTT1/AC3 combination for the main light and the background light plus an SB800 on a FlexTT5 for the hair light). I shot tethered in the studio into my MacBook Pro. One light was directly behind the subject, flagged so none of the light touched directly, pointed directly to the background and the main light far to the left and up a bit, just enough to provide some light on the client's left cheek, but a very dominant hemi-portrait. I also had him look straight into the lens and had him have a relaxed but serious look. He did a wonderful job.
Another Portrait Session
While I do shoot headshots for websites, I prefer a somewhat more complex portrait session that includes many different kinds of views. My reasoning is most people are not unidimensional and have many different aspects to their personality and character.
Below are a few examples from a recent portrait session that is 'typical'. There are both studio images as well as outdoor images. This approach creates a very rich collection of pictures that the client will be able to use in many different ways.
