Thursday, September 10, 2009

Mother and Daughter - It's All In The Eyes

And people wonder why I love photographing kids. Look at the innocence and emotion in these eyes! I was taking photos at my friend Michele's parents 35th anniversary party and took a little time with her daughter to grab this shot. The best way to photograph kids is to let them be themselves and just hang back with a long lens. She was playing with this little fountain (in the restaurant courtyard) and I waited for just the right moment to capture this photo.

And where does the little girl get those great eyes? From her mom of course. So we walked just outside the courtyard by a nice wall and I shot this photo of Michele. I used a 50mm 1.4 lens to make the most of the depth of field and focus only on her eye. I wanted to show Michele and just a hint of the light fixture in the background, but also hide the fact that we were in a parking lot!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Kayla's Bat Mitzvah

Another Saturday and another Bat Mitzvah to shoot. Talk about a photogenic family! I especially love this shot of them blowing out the candles. I took this with the Canon 5D Mark II pushing the ISO to 3200 and handheld this shot using only the candlelight to light their faces.

Here, Craig (the father) gets lifted in the chair celebrating his daughter's big day. As you can tell, he was having a great time and showed lots of emotion. This is why I love photography, being able to capture people's personalities in one shot.

And...speaking of characters and personality, this little girl was hysterical. Not only did she continue dancing until 11:30pm, but she did so with a big smile on her face the entire time.