Featured Photos

Mother’s Day, 2012 [Photo]

Mama and son posing for a Mother’s Day portrait session.

Back Story

What more could you give the mother of a young family for Mother’s Day than time with the family she loves and beautiful portraits for her to always remember this perfect moment in time.

And that’s exactly what we set out to do this past Sunday for my wife, taking her out for a picnic and photo shoot back to the same place we took the first formal portraits of our son back on his sixth month birthday. Instant memories, for sure.

Even though we love that our son is so much more mobile now than he was 11 months ago, it comes with the trade-off in not wanting to stay still for photos at this age. While it was certainly a challenge for both my wife and I, we managed to pull it off, and come up with a few new tricks to try next time.

52 to Two Project

As with previous shoots involving our son this year, I selected 3 of them to be included as the latest installment of my 52 to Two project. It still hasn’t returned to being an every week effort, but there are still a few missing shoots to post and many, many more weeks left to go this year.

 

Full Photo Shoot

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos from our Mother’s Day portrait session, check out the Mother’s Day Portraits, 2012 photo shoot page.

Model Look [Photo]

Our son posing for portraits while Mama gets ready for Easter dinner.

The photo shown above is actually a cropped version to fit the blog format. Here’s the full image:

 

Back Story

Thanks to my wife, our son is usually better dressed than I am, especially on the weekend.

But when he put on his Sunday bests for a big Easter dinner with her family this year, I had to break out the camera and take some shots. Besides, our son and I had a little time to kill while she was still getting ready herself.

Two Sessions

The photos from Easter were broken down into two sessions. The first being at home with natural light coming through the balcony doors, and the second being outdoors after Easter dinner had ended.

The outdoor session was a little trickier because of the harsh light, and the fact that our son had way too much energy to sit still and pose long enough in any one spot. I’m afraid that’s going to be the usual case for the foreseeable future, so I’m hoping to get a lot of practice at it.

52 to Two Project

In addition to the photo above, these other two photos have also been included in my 52 to Two project, which is practically on life support these days. No time to dwell on the missed goals, however, just looking towards moving forward.

 

Full Photo Shoot

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos from these two Easter photo shoots, you can check out the Easter Portraits, 2012 photo shoot page.

Happy Snow Baby [Photo]

One happy baby enjoying his first day out in a snow covered, winter wonderland.

Back Story

After an unplanned “mental health” break last weekend, I was back behind the camera this past Saturday as the ‘ohana ventured out into the snow for our first winter snow portrait session.

And with the nearly unprecedented lack of snow so far this winter here in Chicago, it’s been a long wait to get out there do a shoot like this. While we were only shooting for 15 minutes, we had a blast and there were a ton of images to go through and edit afterwards.

All told, it was a great time that I can’t wait to do again. However, less than 72 hours after we were blessed with all this snow, the temps jumped above 40, the rains came and washed it all away – literally overnight. Bummer.

Guess it’s time to stalk the 10-day forecast again.

52 to Two Project

The above photo and the two below were also included as part of my weekly 52 to Two project.

Half Snow Angel

In the Bushes

Photo Shoot Photos

In addition to the photos added to the 52 to Two project, you can also see the rest of the images from this shoot in the Winter Snow Portraits gallery.

View Photo Shoot

 

Here’s to wishing for the next big snowstorm and coming up with ideas for this week’s photo shoot as well.

– Kris

Outdoor Portrait [Photo]

Outdoor portrait on a relatively warm January afternoon.

Back Story

Back with another installment in my weekly 52 to Two project. And for being the 2nd week in January already in Chicago, there may be a post from me soon titled “Where’s the Snow?” But that’s for another time.

This past weekend’s shoot was outdoors with natural light, thanks to some unseasonably warm “winter” weather. We started at about 4:45pm – which was a little bit before sunset – and shot for almost 30 minutes. The light was still a little harsh in the beginning because there were practically no clouds, but once the sun went down behind the buildings behind us, the light was gorgeous (but changing rapidly).

We were out in an open field, so I took another chance to shoot with my 70-200mm f/2.8L again with all that extra room to work with. The shoot actually worked somewhat similarly to some of the shoots we took in Door County back in October, which was nice. I originally had hoped to continue on with the walking theme from last week, but by the time the light was perfect, he was already getting tired.

A few of the other images from this shoot can be found over at my Facebook page in the Photo Shoots – 2012 album.

Here are the other two images that made it into the 52 to Two image galley this week.

Playing in the Grass.

Beautiful Light

View all the photos to-date in the 52 to Two project galley.

View Image Gallery

 

Future Shoot

While this field is literally minutes from our front door, it was the first time we did a shoot out there. The only thing that was missing – especially this time of year – was the snow. You can bet that as I continue to monitor the extended forecast, we’ll be back out to the same place at least once to get some wintry goodness.

Until then,
– Kris

Unnamed Beach [Photo]

A small beach with no name between the airport and the ocean.

Update: One of my Facebook readers kindly identified this as Kanaha Beach Park – Mahalo!

Back Story

2011 was a great year for my photography in so many ways, I probably should have done a “best of” post before it was over. Instead, I spent some time going back through my collections in Lightroom and ended up looking at a fair amount of shots from my doors-off helicopter shoot back in August during the Maui Photo Festival.

So, after a little time here and there this past weekend, I finished processing a handful of new images that I wanted to share here at the blog and elsewhere:

After Takeoff

North Shore Sands

Ka’anapali Beach

Maui Windmills

More Images

If you’d like to see more images from this photo shoot, visit the Maui Doors-Off Helicopter ’11 gallery in the Photo Shoots section.

View Photo Shoot

 

You can also find more of my other aerial imagery in my Aerial Portfolio.

View Aerial Portfolio

 

Last, but not least, you can also buy prints of these images and others in the Above Maui print gallery at my online store.

Buy Prints

 

As always, I hope you enjoy the images and the beauty of Maui, and many thanks for the support.

– Kris