Jer & Min Photography

Well, it was my night to cook…

This kid is so hard to photo.  He moves so much, but has so much fun.

My wife held the black side of a reflector to Gage’s right to add a bit of shadow and depth to the photo.  It was processed using a variety of tools from Color Efex Pro.  I absolutely love that software.  Final sepia was done using a preset in Lightroom.

My youngest son Gage absolutely adores his older brother Toby.  Today was Toby’s first day of kindergarten.  I went home during my lunch break to watch him get on the bus.  Prior to leaving the house, Gage gave Toby a hug and that is what I captured.  I wish I would have been ready to shoot a shot of Gage as Toby got on the bus.  Evidently Gage thought he was going with Toby and tried to follow him on which led to some crying.  I’m grateful my kids love each other and feel that connection.

I realize it is very snap shot-ish.  That is what it was, but it invokes the emotion in me.

Our skies are pure blue, no sign of storm at all so when my son was crying and my wife holding him, I took a shot.  I feel semi badly about exploiting his sadness for the photo, but my wife was comforting him, there was little else I could do.

My youngest son Gage has had flu-like symptoms this week.  It has been a rough week for him with a lot of crying.  My second child Toby who loves Gage to pieces has almost constantly been at his side.  In this shot, Gage was crying and Toby went and got his blanket and was trying to soothe him.  It was a tender moment.  It shows clearly the wonderful nature of Toby and the love of family members.

This photo is intentionally out of focus.  I’m not sure why, but it felt appropriate for the subject; perhaps I feel the kindest acts we perform don’t need to be widely recognized but rather our reward can come from the feelings we get the friendships we create.

I feel my son’s eyes are very expressive.  His mom was getting ready to head off to drop off our daughter at a friends house and he wasn’t too pleased about her leaving.  He, like I, loves her incredibly.  I may have had the same look on my face, I’m not sure.

I really enjoy low key photos that have an anonymous feel to them.  I feel this is one of the strengths of black and white photography.  I feel they are beautiful.  As a result, I’ve attempted a couple pictures lately using this technique.

Setup for this photo was pretty simple, it was nearing the end of the day when the sun was setting and coming through our windows.  Where the sun wasn’t hitting, the shadows were deepening and it was almost time to turn on the lights.  I caught Gage standing in the sun and by using my spot metering mode, I made my camera meter on the sunlight as it touched his face.  Doing so underexposed all of the shadows but correctly exposed the light.  I then converted to B&W and increased the contrast a little and what I ended up with is shown below.

I made heavy use of spot metering for this photo.