Jer & Min Photography

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 caught this photo of Toby resting his head on Min’s shoulder as I was chimping my exposure getting ready to take a few family portraits.  I liked the peaceful look on his face.

Strobist: ISO 100, f/5.6, single flash camera right shot through a shoot through umbrella.  Triggered with CyberSyncs.

Toby is a very interesting boy.  There is something about him that draws people to him.  He has the ability to wiggle his way into anyone’s heart.  He is a fun loving boy who let me shoot a lot of photos of him last night, (100+) and in everyone he had a different facial expression.  He likes to make people laugh and is very good at it which sometimes gets him in trouble!

This picture is #4 in my 100 People I know set.

This is my first published shot with off camera flashes.  I had many others strobist shots that turned out better, but none of my children being children.

My children love to read.  We are constantly walking past their rooms at night and finding them with a flashlight or some other lighting device reading.  It is great.

Strobist Info: 1 Gelled flash at 1/32 power held by my son.  Triggered by CyberSync triggers.

This is a staged photo, he isn’t an angry boy.  Last Halloween Toby dressed as Batman.  He figured Batman needed to look very angry at every door so he pulled his Batman face whenever someone answered.  It was actually very cute and we have him do it often because it is so against his character.

I struggled to determine how I was going to capture a shot for today’s challenge. I suspect that the days when I lack inspiration and push through it are the days I grow.

My son Toby is rather difficult to photograph, he doesn’t like to model or to pose nicely.  He does however, love to pull faces and to goof around in front of the camera.  Every time I need a photo of him, I have to do it on the sly which makes for some challenging shots, but shots that truly show him and his character.

This first shot is an exception as he was actually posing for the camera.

We sure love you Toby!

Last night we carved pumpkins.  It is so fun to watch my children explore new things and to see the excitment on their faces.  Last night was especially rewarding.

I shot these photos with my Nifty Fifty (50mm f/1.8) in rather low light.  The lens did amazingly well.  I then processed the photos in Lightroom 2 using some presets I found on http://x-equals.com/blog/.  They have some great presets over there, I recommend checking them out.  That being said, the last two photos I wish I would have reviewed a bit more as the preset I used on them added some odd artifacting that I’m not too fond of and should have addressed.

More photos from this and our Halloween adventures may be found on our Halloween 2008 set.

Tonight we watched a cold sunset.  I posed Brinci and Toby by it and took a quick shot.  My subjects (Toby in particular) weren’t too interested in posing, so I had to be quick.  I appreciate that they humored me as much as they did.  Tomorrow starts my black and white weekend.

Toby in the snow!

So I’m currently in my 50mm weekend and I’m loving it.  It is taking a bit of getting used to as this is the first time I’ve shot with a fixed focal length for any period of time.  I wish I could go out and about a bit more with this lens this weekend, but it is really snowing hard which means time for portraits.

I’ve been evaluating Lightroom 2.0 (I’m definitely going to buy it) and I decided to do partial saturation today.  Here are the results: