Family Portrait session

[KariBelle]

I had one of the funnest sessions I've ever had with what I'll call "Family M." They had so much fun with it and wanted all the wacky/crazy type photos they could while still pretending to be serious. Below are a couple of my favs in their before/after state...

The "before" for all of these were taken the same way -- my husband and I set up our mini-studio area in our living room with our lights and white backdrop and began the session. We talked with each of the family members as we grouped them and asked them questions like "do you have a girlfriend" to one of the boys and got them all joking around and having fun! All shots were taken either Canon EOS Rebel 2Ti or EOS 60D

The "after" was done utilizing Photoshop CS5 and a bunch of different digital backgrounds.





^^ this one is probably my favorite of the whole session. The mother told me before we had the session that she and her boys had never had family portraits and she's never had any professional pictures of her with any of the boys... her son here is a senior and will be graduating this year... so somehow this one just spoke to me as the perfect capture of their relationship, combined with a wonderful background.... and viola!





^^ every family with multiple siblings has the "quiet one" .... this is Family M's quiet one. He didn't know what he wanted to do for their "fun pose" so with Wrestlemania a few days after this session, we got to talking about it.. and he busted out with the ever famous "U Can't See Me" pose....




^^^ Mom M is a fan of "brick work" and we were really going for the "you know you guys love each other" .... and they were still in a silly mood, so we went with this instead! Priceless



And lastly, one of my favorites from a session with a beautiful toddler, Little Miss A... her mother got this one as a big poster-sized print because she loved it so much :

[evader]

Those are great. I really like the 2nd and 3rd ones...great work with the backgrounds. Do you mind if I ask where you get all the background from?

[yulchick]

Good job with the backrounds, wouldnt know it was all done in post work if you havent told me I just wish the guys feet werent croped off in the first shot, just kinda takes away from the jot IMO. My fav is number two, I like the backround, it looks fun and natural

[KariBelle]

Thanks!

I got all my digi backgrounds from Amazon.com - most are from EZBackgrounds and the others are from Photocoach.

[KariBelle]

Thanks, Julia! I had a blast doing them... both the session itself and the editing! The family was such a fun group of people, and the mom was all about just having fun --- it was a breath of fresh air when she wasn't all worried when her boys didn't feel like doing the "stand and smile" type photos... she was so happy that we captured her family as they are normally. When she was going through and looking at the photos to select them, she said "those are my boys!" with a little tear in her eye, and that is probably the best compliment from a client so far...

[Lute]

Nice work!

The only thing I would recommend is to add shadowing/highlights where applicable with the new backgrounds.

For example in the first photo, the light source is fairly hard coming from overhead and behind. This would create a highlight on top of/the back of their heads and shoulders. Then shadowing the legs more, with lighter edges (as the light would "wrap around" slightly from the back). Also, the baby still has a slight green cast from the BG in the last shot.

A good way to simulate light/dark is to make a new layer, set to overlay, fill with 50% grey (there is a tick box in the new layer dialogue box for this to save manually doing it) then using a brush and painting black for shadows and white to lighten (start @ 10% brush opacity and work up from there if needed) on this new layer. This is a nice non-destructive way of adding it in

[KariBelle]

Thank you for the suggestions! I appreciate that, and I will keep that in mind when I do more!

Originally Posted by Lute

Nice work!

The only thing I would recommend is to add shadowing/highlights where applicable with the new backgrounds.

For example in the first photo, the light source is fairly hard coming from overhead and behind. This would create a highlight on top of/the back of their heads and shoulders. Then shadowing the legs more, with lighter edges (as the light would "wrap around" slightly from the back). Also, the baby still has a slight green cast from the BG in the last shot.

A good way to simulate light/dark is to make a new layer, set to overlay, fill with 50% grey (there is a tick box in the new layer dialogue box for this to save manually doing it) then using a brush and painting black for shadows and white to lighten (start @ 10% brush opacity and work up from there if needed) on this new layer. This is a nice non-destructive way of adding it in