Saturday morning was a fun morning. We got out early enough to beat the heat and stayed in the shadows of the buildings for the most part, so even the heat of a Phoenix summer didn’t deter us from taking some cool engagement portraits. Then add one very cool dog… It was a fun photo session with some cool results.

The slideshow is below and then my favorite images from the engagement session. Enjoy.

Downtown in any city is a great place to shoot (provided that it is a safe city).  There are obviously interesting backdrops everywhere you look, but one of the great advantages of photographing, in this case, engagement portraits, in the city is that the buildings give you cover from the sun at any point in the day.  No matter where the sun is, you can always find a shady spot.  So we took our engagement portrait shoot downtown in Phoenix, Arizona.  I always enjoy the painted lines and text on streets in a photograph and in this one, the street lines and the lines of the dog’s leash converge quite nicely, making an accelerated sense of perspective.

Cute shoes, cute dog.  No need to photograph anything else.

She is a super small girl, so she almost disappears when she snuggles in, but there seems to be a joyous safety in that and I can see that in her smile.

Again, I am using the converging lines of the parking entrance as the major design element in this shot.  And of course, her leg is perfect.  And the shoe too.

This dog is the coolest dog.  He was a rescued dog and she was his “foster parent”, but fell in love with him.  Can’t blame her for that.  The dog was low key and casual and was super cooperative as a subject.  Hence, lots of photos were taken with the dog.

Everytime I photograph animals at a wedding or engagement portrait, I am reminded of my earlier years in photography when I shot Christmas portraits of peoples’ pets on Santa’s lap at a local PetSmart store.  My favorite was when Santa (an elderly animal shelter worker lady) was handed a very large snake to hold.  She had a tough time with that assignment.  Then later, at a commercial studio, we shot the isle blades and catalog images for PetSmart.  We had dogs, cats, hamsters, snakes, parrots, lizards, fish and everything else you can think of on the set.  It was quite the experience.  Anyway, one animal becomes easy after that and this dog was a real cool customer.  So he was great.

I especially love this shot.  It was taken in an alleyway next to the hotel laundry room, so hot air was blowing on me as I shot in the already increasing temperatures of the Phoenix sumer morning, but the lighting was perfect.  No artificial light was necessary.  The only major light source was coming from the street where the dog is looking and bouncing off the walls as it filtered toward us.  That bounce with a little general fill light from the sliver of sky above gives the shadows just enough light to keep them full of interesting detail.

This next shot is in the same alleyway, so the light is similar, just with a very weak fill flash to soften up the drama.

And the parting shot – one of my favorite buildings in all of phoenix is the Orpheum Theater, which has been fused with the more modern Phoenix City building towering over it.  It was an beautiful way to merge the old and the new together.

I have a list of favorite new features in Adobe Lightroom 3.0 but the best feature is the speed.  It is so much faster and more responsive than the prior versions.  They did a great job with it.  I am looking forward to teaching my fall workshops with the new version.  See you all out there on the road.  Check out the tour schedule at www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Adobe Lightroom 3.0 My Favorite New Features from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Lightroom 3.0 is faster with lots of new features. This video is a list of my favorite new features in Lightroom 3.0 and how I use them.

New born baby portraits are some of my favorite images to make.  I’m not talking about posed studio infant portraits, I’m talking about in the hospital new born photographs.  They are the most precious things on the planet and I can not get over the tiny little fingers that work just like big fingers.  Sebastian is an alert little baby with a lot of strength, and he loved the camera.  Here are just a few shots from the hospital.  More to come later, slideshow and all…

I told you, I have been very fortunate lately.  My infant portrait sessions have been wonderful, all of the kids have been very calm and cooperative.  This one was kind of a reunion, I shot child life portraits of big brother a few years back, so it was fun to see him again.  He has grown so much and of course, I am sure he didn’t remember me, but we told him he did, and he at least pretended to remember me, so I felt good about that.

Here is the slideshow and a few examples of my favorite images from the infant portrait session.

I love watching the relationships between an infant and their older siblings.

Dad’s initials are the same as the infant’s initials.  This is dad’s cuff link.  It was a spur of the moment idea on dad’s part.  I liked the way it turned out.

This was a cute little blanket with a teddy bear head at the top.  A great photo to start a baby book, I thought.

Great-grandpa made the rocking-horse in the background.  This is the reason I advocate going into the baby’s space rather than going into a studio to photograph an infant portrait.  There are so many very important things that are missed.  I am always going to take important historical significance over cute portraits any day.

As I was photographing the baby on the floor, I noticed that dad was looking in with interest.  So I changed my angle and asked mom to join.  This to me is the perfect little story.

Here is great-grandpa with the boys and their respective rocking horses, both made by his hands.  I can’t think of a more important photo that I took that day.

This one speaks for itself.

Big brother was getting a bit bored of the photoshoot, so I took a few minutes to goof around with him and do something he thought was super fun.  When I suggested he climb into a pile of his stuffed animals, his eyes lit up.  I don’t think his parents knew about this photo at the time, I think it is a surprise for them.  I think they will like it.

Random hats came out.  I though this one was a winner.

There is always the photos of the small little hands contrasted with the parent’s hands, but I like to push the limits of that photo and get something a little different with some unique framing and compositions.  This requires a lot of attempts with a large number of failures because the baby is often moving a lightning speeds, but there are always some successes.

I had to wait for the crying with this little guy as well.  He was such a pleasant little baby.  But I think I got a good one.

As we wrapped up the evening portrait session, the family started winding down and turned on the FOX News Network.  Big brother (only 4 or 5) was completely engrossed in whatever Bill O’Reilly was saying.  There’s a future politician for you.

And I couldn’t have asked for a better wrap up photo than this one.  Great-grandpa and great-grandma relaxing with the baby.  You couldn’t get this photo in a studio, no matter how much planning you did.   Studios are great for formulaic portraits and perfect lighting, but they don’t lend themselves to capturing life.  And as Henri Cartier-Bresson said, ”photography is nothing, it’s life that interests me.”

I just finished adjusting and editing a new set of infant portraits.  Our little model was a very pleasant baby.  I have had a few very pleasant baby models lately, perhaps it is summer babies?  Anyway, this photo session was a joy.  Enjoy the slide show and the example photos below.

We did some documentary style stuff as well as a few set up shots in around the house.  When I shoot this way, we use little or no flash (preferably no flash if I can get away with it).  In this instance, we are using the window light and the room light, nothing more and shooting at a high ISO with a 2.8 aperture to allow for as much light as possible and as a bonus, we get that shallow depth of field which really puts the focus on those beautiful baby eyes.

I love this next series.  Big brother is trying to get in on the action.  I see this in my kids all the time.  Big brother always wants to give the baby a hug or a kiss.  This set of three images deserves to be seen together.

And now for some portraits.  This one turned out wonderfully.  I was so happy with the lighting on it.  Let me remind you that this is in the client’s home.  You don’t need a studio to shoot this, in fact, everyone is more comfortable in their own home (assuming they like their home).  I love how the baby and dad emerge from the dark background and the baby’s hands are perfectly placed.  Way to go dad!  And then the baby went pee all over him…  But I think he’ll agree, it was worth it… I know mom will.

This is a one week old baby.  She had a lot of strength.  This was all her, with no heroics and quite a developed little grin too.

This is one of my favorite shots from the infant portrait session.  It is so soft and full of brightness and warmth.  Depth is a magnificent thing in a photograph.

The baby cried one time.  I love photographing a crying baby.  A lot of parents worry when their child cries of fusses during a portrait session.  They fuss and stress, which tends to stress the child even more and the apologize profusely to me.  I have to remind people that I am attempting to capture the personality of their child, their expressions and mannerisms.  When they cry, that is a great photograph too.  In fact, I love looking back at the pouty photos of my children.  Those pouts and sour faces are a part of their personality.  Of course with this little baby, I worried she might never realy give me a good cry, but she got one in for me and I was ready to capture it.

There is a lot of warmth in this image which is not from the lighting at the scene, in fact the lighting was very cool.  The daylight outside was very blue as was the flash I was bouncing into the ceiling.  All of the warmth is added in Adobe Lightroom in post production.  Most of these images were not ever brought into Photoshop.  For those of you who are interested in the technical side of this, I do not simply increase the temperature to get warmth in my photos, that does not look real and often times will over saturate the warmer tones in the image.  Instead, we are adding a image toner in the highlights and the shadows.  This creates a more realistic feeling of warmth.  I will be posting a lesson on this technique on my Lightroom Podcast on iTunes next week, so if you are interested, go subscribe.

This was a perfect dresser for a little baby portrait.  I love all of the white in the shot, it helps the little toys and decorations, like that teddy bear.  It is a very geometrical shot.  I am generally much more prone to angling my frames in strange ways, but when geometry gets involved I work very hard to make sure I have the angles very square to the camera.  In a small room, though, this becomes difficult, because wide angle lenses distort the edges of the frame and straight lines become a bit bowed.  There are two solutions to this: 1. buy or rent a very expensive rectilinear lens or 2. fix it in post by negating the warp in Photoshop. — OR — the third option, which does not require Photoshop at all and is almost completely automatic.  I choose the third option.  All of my shots are automatically adjusted for lens distortion based on the camera and lens combination I am using.  I can’t believe it is possible to do it, but it is… look at the results, they are nothing short of miraculous.  Oh, what is the third option?  Ligthroom.  This technology is also available in the latest camera raw Photoshop CS5 as well.  Having this technology available has changed my imagery quite a bit.  I would never have taken the time to go into each image in Photoshop to negate the lens distortion, and now I don’t have to.  Have you figured out that I prefer to stay out of photoshop as much as possible?

As much as I like the first version, I do enjoy the more simplified version, the close-up.  It has a much more graphic design to it.

On the little shelf above the dresser was a small suitcase, which also made a good little prop for her to sit in.  I always look for things in the house I can use as props and backdrops.  I try not to rely on bringing props with me and although it makes for a more challenging job, the portraits turn out to be far more interesting, because it is the child’s natural surroundings.  Natural props in the photos are things that will mean far more to the parents in years to come than some cute prop in a studio.  In this case, she will probably have this bear for years too come.  I love the way she is holding the bear’s ribbon.  I did need to run this one through Photoshop because mom was holding the baby up, so her arm had to be removed from the shot.

And her comes big brother with an Oreo Cookie.

Little feet, big hands.  Everything about an infant is so perfect.  They are perfect little miracles.