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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

– Kris

Taking a short break from walking through the hallway in our building.

Back Story

In addition to being the start of the new year, Sunday was also the latest edition in my 52 to Two project.

And it wasn’t much longer after last week’s photo shoot was over before I already knew what I wanted to shoot this week – our son’s new found skill of walking all on his own.

So after a week of watching him run circles around our condo, it was clear we didn’t have enough room to do a shoot for his walking talents. It would have been great to chase him around a park somewhere, but it was the middle of winter – that wasn’t going to happen. The hallway outside our unit was the best compromise we could come up with.

It was great having the extra room to use my 70-200mm f/2.8L lens again, and it turns out that extra stop of light was very necessary. The light in our hallway wasn’t as bright as I had thought it would be, so these shots were taken at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 using only the available light on the walls and ceiling.

The One That Got Away

I went to bed Saturday night envisioning a way to capture our son’s triumph over gravity in motion by deciding to shoot a composite of frames with him in full stride.

In order to go wider, I switched back to my 24-105mm f/4L lens, so I was already losing a stop of light there. Next, I had to dial down the aperture further in order of widen the depth of field, which brought me to f/10. To compensate for that, I maxed out the ISO at 6400, and well, the final result fell short of my expectations:

Outtake Image

I still like the concept, and am contemplating re-shooting this piece before walking becomes second nature to him. In order to pull it off, however, I imagine one or two continuous lights would be needed and that’s not in the budget this early in the year.

But we’ll see how creative I can be in the weeks ahead.

The wrapping paper flies as presents are revealed X-mas morning.

Back Story

As part of Week 03 of my 52 to Two project this week, I set to capture images of our son opening presents on his first X-mas morning. Well, technically he was 3 weeks old last year at X-mas, but you get the point.

The hope was to shoot with natural light because our tree was setup right next to the balcony doors. However, with the room facing south, we didn’t receive enough light at 10am to get the images I wanted. So it was time to close the blinds and bounce the flash.

You can find the chosen shots for this week in the 52 to Two image galley, and see the rest of the shoot over at the X-mas Morning photoset on Flickr.

New Photography Goodies

In addition to our son expanding his stockpile of toys, I also scored a few photography related gifts on Sunday that will certainly come in handy with this project and my other work in the new year:

• X-Rite ColorChecker Passport [ Adorama ]
• Expoimaging Rogue FlashBender [ Adorama ]

The ColorChecker Passport has been on my radar for while, after watching Episode 209 of Digital Photography on AdoramaTV. I’ve had a few cases where my subject was wearing his traditional red Blackhawks gear on game night, and the reds were just throwing me off in post. Using something like the passport, I hope to drastically improve how those colors fit into the rest of my images.

The FlashBender just seemed pretty neat after reading a few reviews on it, and it should also fit well into this weekly project of mine. Having a reliable way to bounce flash in many different rooms, settings, or even outdoors feels like a strategic advantage too good not to try. We’ll see how it goes as I factor it into my shoots.

Your Gifts?

Did you get any neat photography gifts this season? Do share…

– Kris

A little peck on the cheek from Mama and Christian is all smiles.

Back Story

These photos were actually “forgotten” until recently when I was going through photos from our Door County trip in June. Once I saw them, I knew I wanted to share them. Taken only one week after the Naperville Riverwalk portraits on his six month birthday, so it’s amazing to see how he looks now compared to back then.

Silly Face

Smile

Door County Prints

Remember I said I rediscovered these when going through photos from past Door County trips? Well, those are being edited and added to the Door County print gallery over at my online print store.

Take a look around if you visited “The Door” before or even if you haven’t and wanted to see what it’s like through my lens. And check back often – more images are being posted throughout the week.

– Kris

Sister Bay, WI on a cloudy autumn afternoon in between rain showers.

Back Story

This photo is actually a remake from a series of shots I took in Door County back in October, 2009. It was a raining just about the entire weekend, but I did manage to get a few shots in between showers.

This has been one of my favorite images in my Door County portfolio, so why did I decide to remake it? Well, here’s the original version that I published in 2009:

Sister Bay – Original Version

Your Take?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what do you think? The original – more monochromatic version – has it’s own autumn feel to it, while the remake captures more of the colorful beauty that is Door County in autumn.

Leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

– Kris

A child’s nursery is his kingdom.

Back Story

As part of my yet-to-be-announced weekly project for capturing our son’s 2nd year, he and I spent 30 minutes playing in his nursery Sunday morning for a little playtime. Or, now that he’s one year old, should we stop calling it a nursery? (I’ll ask the wife).

More details on the new project coming this week, and if you’d like to see more photos from the shoot, check out the Nursery Playtime Shoot gallery.

– Kris

Taking a typical scene from a holiday tree and taking it out of focus.

Back Story

After grabbing daytime holiday photos two weeks earlier, we found ourselves back at the mall to take in some of the holiday lights in their full glory. And I managed to capture one nice, holiday light portrait…

…our son lost interest in posing for the camera. Hey, it happens.

So that’s when things turned a little creative…

Manual Focus Blur

As highlighted in the image at the top of this post, I captured a few images by switching to manual focus and intentionally blurring the holiday lights to create some nice big light circles. Certainly something you can use as a background or something else like that.

Here’s a quick before/after of the same scene both in-focus and then with manual blur:

Super easy and very fun.

Zoom Blur and Body Twist

Next, I put a little twist on things – namely, my camera.

My switching to a longer shutter speed (and dropping the ISO to compensate) I first did a zoom blur opening the shutter and then slowly zooming out while the shutter was open.

Next, I worked the opposite way and instead of zooming with the lens, I held it still and twisted the camera body for shots like this.

Ornament Reflections

Finally, the oversized and reflective globe ornaments on the tree caught my eye. So I literally went around the entire tree looking for different sizes and colors to take shots of my reflection and the scenes behind me (loosely inspired by our shoot in Millennium Park). I then cropped them square and arranged them into a 2×2 collage using Diptic on the iPad.

More Photos

If you’d like to see all the photos from this shoot, check out the Holiday Abstract Shoot gallery.

Our son checking out the remaining presents at his party.

Back Story

After successfully surviving our first year of parenthood, we were excited to host our own baby luau for our son’s first birthday party. It was a little hectic at the moment pulling everything together that during that week, and then playing “host” and making sure everyone was enjoying themselves. But in the end, everyone had a great time and our son handled everything like a champ.

From a photography standpoint, just about all of these were shot with on camera flash, bouncing light whenever I could. There were a few were I tried to bump the ISO up to 3200 on my 5DMKII and reduced noise in Lightroom, but that was only for a few shots that made it.

Also, these shots were from four different rooms during they party, each with their own lighting challenges. The was the same house (my aunt’s house) that I shot my wife’s baby shower last year – except that was during the day and we had great daylight coming in the windows. This party was at night, and I could certainly see a difference, even in the same room as last year!

Photo Gallery

If you want to see more, check out the First Birthday Party gallery in the Photo Shoots section.