BIRTHDAY: Celebrating Number One

For my first shoot of the year, I had the pleasure of photographing a client's daughter's first birthday at their home in Burbank. When you see the gorgeous little girl you will surely remember her from the shoot at the Griffith Observatory, with the great jewel tone colors.

You may not be aware that THOMPSON and SPRING photography offers a "Birthday Package" for your kid's birthday. It includes two hours of coverage and you get CD of 40-60 high resolution images, however, in the case of the Birthday Package the photos are un-retouched.

For this birthday I wanted to try a makeshift photo booth, with a draped cloth. Her mom was happy to humor me. I'm glad, as there are some really great pictures that came out of it.


I also had fun turning them into retro images, by adding a 70's inspired fade and turning them in to B&W. You may remember my little obsession with all things Polaroid before the Holidays... BTW- I did get the Fuji Instax for Christmas and it turns out my son gets just as much joy out of the instant images as I did when I was a kid.

Thank you for allowing me to share in this great milestone and for making me feel like one of the family.

HEADSHOT: IN THE LIGHT

THOMPSON and SPRING Photography specializes in child, family and maternity photography, but that doesn't mean that is all I will do.

My husband needed a new corporate headshot, so he asked me if I would do the honors. Of course I was happy to oblige, he is after all one of my favorite subjects. The shoot was short and smooth; so different to working with children who are not yet able to be directed. However, it was not without its challenges. This was the first time I was photographing my husband as corporate professional, rather than as a loving husband and father, so the vibe was different. I also had to get him to relax enough so that his smile would be genuine and open.

I am happy with the results and so is my husband. He told me the photos I took of him were miles better than those that were taken by the photographer his company had hired a few months back.

A headshot is a headshot, so I wont bore you with ever so slightly different tilts of the head. Instead I wanted to show you how different a photo can look depending on how you manipulate it. Post a comment and let me know which version you like best. To see the photos bigger, just click on the image. Thanks for voting!

COLLAGE

So the other day I wanted to experiment and try to make a collage from multiple photos. I had seen this done by David Hockney with landscapes. Though David Hockney is probably better known for his swimming pool paintings, it is his photo collages that really made an impression on me. While experimenting I found that finding an interesting subject matter to photograph was not so simple. The subject matter had to be interesting not only from left to right, but also from top to bottom to add some vertical interest.

At the Brasserie Anisette in Santa Monica, I found just the right subject. I moved all around the restaurant taking pictures at every angle. I printed about 100 photos and ended up using about 12 photos for the collage, since it's a trial and error process to see which photos work well together even when taken from different angles. Don't worry, I'm going to re-purpose the prints I didn't use.

Check it out for yourselves. I'm quite pleased with my first attempt, but I wonder if portrait clients would be interested in this approach as an end product. Thoughts?

p.s. I should note that the food at the restaurant was really good. I had a delicious modern interpretation of a Pain Bagnat, which is just a fancy pants name for a niçoise salad sandwich.