{Gear}

• Canon 5D {main camera}
• Canon 7D {pullbacks}
• 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS {main lens}
• 50mm f/1.2 {pullbacks}
• Lenshood – yes
• White reflector

{Settings}

• All shot in AV mode between f/2.8 and f/3.5
• WB – Auto
• Format – RAW

{Editing}

• Images culled in Lightroom
• All colors edited in Lightroom {no Photoshop! Doesn’t happen often, but I set myself a challenge}. B&Ws edited in Photoshop 4.
• Processing started with One Willow Presets Timeless Collection {‘Lyric’} and then tweaked for each shot, including dodging/burning on all images. Black & whites in Photoshop with Florabella’s ‘B&W Film’ from the Luxe II collection of actions. That little ditty always makes my heart sing!
• Poses inspired by Skye Hardwick’s posing guides

{Pullbacks}

Janie asking to see how mine were looking. A really useful part of shooting together - comparing composition.

Shooting with Janie - due to speckling from the sunlight and the trees, we were waiting until the moments she walked into the clean shade before hitting the trigger.

Posing with Emily - love the look on her face :)

I love these little shacks in the playground. This wasn't in shade, but it was so overcast that there were no problems. The catchlights are from the sky while the reflector kept her face evenly lit. This is ideal for me. I'd rather still have natural catchlights when using a reflector.

There are all these little lean-tos in the forest and I knew they'd be a good place to shoot. Gave us more options than just static posing and Emily had somewhere to place her hands and arms.

Daniel showed up shortly after we started shooting Emily. So here we are photographing him where he decided to plunk down on the path. I like to keep the parents behind me because when the interract, it keeps them looking in my direction.

Pretty straightforward portrait.

{Before & Afters}

LOVED the look on her face and chose this shot out of many because of it. When I was at her house helping to choose wardrobe the day before, I instantly pictured this shot when I saw that adorable hat. It frames her face so well and her little whisp of hair in the front is adorable. I wanted it to be one of the few B&Ws of the session because it's all about her eyes & soul here!

This was shot in full-on sunshine with no shade. Was just a perfect moment, really. Edited with lots of dodging & burning to make her stand out from the background as much as possible.

Slightly straightened and then edited with the One Willow presets mentioned above. The one I used for the whole session was 'Lyric'. This is my favourite shot of the whole session. Mostly, though, because of the 3 layers. The foreground in the doorway, the window behind her and then trees with juicy bokeh behind that. Makes it very interesting to me.

This is my second favourite image from the session. I love the jewel tones.

Daniel's images were processed with a different preset from the same collecion but I wanted his session to appear warmer. I did my best to remove the pole behind him, although I must admit I did lose patience for the whole idea. I should've been more mindful of what was in the background.

This little area of woods is amazing and the shots needed very little retouching. Although I minimised his red cheeks in some of the shots, I liked them here because he was smiling so big.

This is probably my favourite from Daniel's session. Straightened and recomposed, but still kept the dead-center composition because I think it says "this is me" and I use it at least a couple times in every session. As nice as a 1/3 or off-center composition feels to look at, a centered composition feels bold and rebellious for me at times and I love it here.

I get emails from folks saying things like “my friends say I’m really good – what do you think?” and I’m really not sure what they’re asking or how much criticism they’re able to take. Seems to me that if they’re already quoting their friends, they’ve bought into the delusion already. The delusion that any one person can look at a photograph and categorically say that it is either good or bad. Sometimes, I have consults with photographers who are second guessing their business/pricing/abilities because they don’t think they’re very good and I’m like “what?! You’re amazing!”

I remember seeing something once about how a photography forum user posted an image from the great street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. He asked for criticism and people jumped down his throat about how the composition, the light, the focus was all wrong and he was an idiot. Little did they know, it was a piece of work that sold for more money than some people make in a year and was a part of a collection of one of the most highly regarded photographers of all time. So what were they even talking about? Where were they in their understanding of good photography vs bad photography?

What does ‘good’ even mean? It’s all relative anyway. We live our lives on this grid of understanding. Everyone is in a different square on the grid. And depending on where you are, you will see things differently. So just like I can’t look at anyone’s photo and say “that’s bad”, no one can really look at it and say “that’s good”. We make these judgements based on our understanding of good and bad and a year or two down the line, that understanding will have changed as you bounce around on the grid.

In that same vein, don’t just take my word for it either. My judgement of what’s good and bad has come from my influences, my experience, my own preference and bias. I can look at an image and say “the highlights are blown”. That’s a fact. But I can’t say “…and because of that, this image is bad.” Just because something is technically bad doesn’t mean that it’s artistically bad.

I think its so important that we qualify the statements that we make about other people’s work and make it more clear that we’re speaking from our own opinions and understanding of what is good and what is bad. What do YOU think?

I get emails quite a lot showing me photos and asking me what I think. I don’t usually answer them because I never know where the person is coming from, what criticism they’ve had in the past or what they are really asking when they say “what do you think?”. Critiquing another photographer’s work isn’t easy. There’s a method to offering constructive criticism and I don’t take it lightly.

That said, participating in forums like Chic Critique {which is totally new to me} is a safe way to receive constructive criticism of your work from photographers who, not only know what they’re talking about, but know how to, not only look at an image, but see an image.

When critiquing an image, I come from all different angles. I talk about the composition, the settings used, the editing, etc. I also talk about what I love about the image. And I give tips for things to try in the future. Sometimes, I even edit the photo during the critique. I don’t rip an image apart and leave it for dead.

So what now? There are 10 slots available for active participants in my Chic Critique in March. And there are also a few slots for those who want to sit back and learn from watching everyone’s critiques without submitting their own work {you can dip your toe in!}

And if you’re not convinced that having your work critiqued by a professional can be beneficial, check out this video which shows you a preview of what you can expect if you sign up for my Chic Critique in March.

Note: There are lots of printing companies but I just used the three biggest ones for my location {Europe}. I didn’t realize that Photobox isn’t available in the USA. It’s kind of equivalent to Snapfish which Americans use quite a lot.

{BUILDING}

Building the three books took completely different turns. I didn’t utilize the built-in templates from any of the companies. Instead, I used this album template from Vol25 in Photoshop and uploaded the pages.

Photobox has so many different book options and ideas

Apple – With Apple, you have to have iPhoto which means that you have to be on an Apple computer. Once you import the photos you want to use into iPhoto {or you import the JPGS of the album pages you made in Photoshop like I did} then you can build your book in just a few clicks. You just highlight all the images you want to use in your book, click ‘book’ and it guides you through the whole process. A few things I noted:

• Apple has loads of really great themes all ready for you to just pop your photos in. All of the book companies do, but in browsing through, theirs appealed to me more.
• Building a book was very easy and enjoyable
• …however as you can see here there are very few size and cover options.

Photobox – Building a book with Photobox takes place all online. They don’t have any software you can download so you have to first upload all of your files into an album and then build your book. This takes a lot of time, but with the other methods of book building described above, the uploading takes place at the end. So either way, you’re waiting for an upload at some point in the process. Of the three, I found Photobox to be the most time consuming to figure out. However, the biggest benefit with working with Photobox was that I could pop the whole two-page spread I’d made in Photoshop into the book at once. Whereas with the others, I had to insert each page separately. Other things I noted:

• There didn’t seem to be any reasonable way in which the image files organized themselves when I wanted to drag them into the book. So the pages were jumbled and not in the order I wanted them in.
• On that note, I wanted to double-click on the files so I could see them bigger to read the text and verify that it was the one I wanted to use. Because I couldn’t view the files larger while building, I had to keep toggling back to my Photoshop in order to view the images large enough to read the text.

All the options from Blurb for building your book

Blurb – Blurb gives you quite a few methods by which you can build your book. From tools for the beginner {I would recommend downloading their Book Smart program} to the super technical Adobe InDesign option, Blurb has many many ways to create a book. You can even make a book with Blurb from within Lightroom 3 and Ligitroom 4 beta! Far out! Some of the things I noted when building my book with Blurb were:

• They have many awesome book size and orientation options. I went for a more bookish shape with Blurb where the other two were more like photo albums
• Built-in copyright page at the beginning of your book {which you can remove if you want}
• Of the three methods, Blurb had the clearest guides
• Blurb had an undo button for when I made a mistake!

{PRICE}

The books were 52 pages.

Apple – The Apple book cost £50. Regular paper. I didn’t remove the adorable Apple logo. Who’d wanna do that? :)

Photobox – And with Photobox, the book was £61.47. With Photobox, you often get BOGO deals and so I also got one for free! I added matte premium paper and paid a couple pounds extra to remove their logo. Photobox also accepts PayPal – yayy!

Blurb – With Blurb, it was £34.83. Regular paper. Logo stayed put. Blurb also accepts PayPal which is very convenient for me.

{FRONT COVER}

click to enlarge

So now to how the book looks.

Apple – the Apple book came with a dust jacket and matching printing on the book itself which I thought was a wonderful element. The printing doesn’t wrap all the way around the spine, but it looks like it does from the front.

Photobox – The Photobox cover stops before it gets to the spine which is a bit off putting.

Blurb – The Blurb cover I chose was image wrap, although it doesn’t exactly wrap. It, too, stops at the spine and then continues at the back. But it still looks fab from the front.

{BACK COVER}

click to enlarge

The back cover of my book is very important to me. It’s the last impression a reader has and I think sets the tone for how they remember your book.

Apple – The back cover of the Apple book had to be blank. Boo! The only option they had was to place an image in the center of the back, but there wasn’t an option to have the whole thing accommodate my back page template. So I chose to leave it blank.

Photobox – The back cover options with Photobox were much the same as with Apple. There were no whole page full-bleed options to just pop in your whole back page image. As you can see, it kind of stops near the bottom where the huge PhotoBox logo is supposed to be, but I paid extra to have that removed.

Blurb – Yayy! Blurb let me put whatever I wanted onto the back so I got to use the actual back cover file I’d created to match my book.

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{INSIDE PAGES}

click to enlarge

Well this is the most important part to me – how the images actually look. In the comparison to the right, you can see that…

Apple – The the image printed by Apple had all the moody contrast that it was meant to have. The shadows were exactly right, nothing weird going on there.

Photobox – I don’t know what they’re thinking here. When I do a print comparison between Photobox and anyone else, Photobox always {sadly} loses. The highlights are blown, there’s no contrast, the shadows are lost. It’s harsh. Triple yuck.

Blurb – Nothing strange with the Blurb printing that I could tell. Much like that of Apple. A tiny bit brighter, but not to its detriment.

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{SPINE/BINDING}

click to enlarge

I think that the binding is the main place that gives away a book’s quality {or lack thereof}. I’m always judging a book by its spine!

Apple – The Apple spine and binding were very good quality. Very much like an actual hardcover book store book. There’s some stitching, but on closer inspection, the pages are still glued in. Not sure what the stitches are for.

Photobox – I’m not sure why I photographed the Photobox one closed. Maybe I couldn’t keep it open? Anyway, I thought it was pretty good for a glued-in binding. I don’t know if ‘glued-in’ is the proper term for it, but there wasn’t any stitching to be seen. It was very nice and, again, like a proper bookstore book.

Blurb – Although this one is also glued in, I found it appeared to be the cheapest. It was a bit wobbly within the cover itself as if the cover would have liked for there to be more pages in it? I didn’t really like it.

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{AUTHOR PAGE}

click to enlarge

It was really important to me that I get to put in information about the author – me! This makes it feel like a real book and allows me to put my face to the project.

Apple – I love how Apple let me put the author page on the dust jacket. Made me feel like a proper author!

Photobox – There wasn’t an option for this like with Apple, so I just made the file in Photoshop and popped it onto the first page.

Blurb – Likewise, I popped the Photoshop file onto the last page along with my branding on the opposite page.

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{BRANDING}

click to enlarge

Sometimes you don’t mind a brand making its appearance on your project. And sometimes you do. All the companies give you the option of removing it for a nominal fee {Apple doesn’t charge to remove}.

Apple – Apple has a cult following. It’s a status symbol. I think people might print through them purely because it’s another place to plaster their logo into their lives! And I love that it says “made on a MAC”. So naturally, I left it there.

Photobox – the Photobox logo was supposed to be on the back and quite large and obtrusive. So I paid to have it removed and place my own on the back cover instead.

Blurb – the Blurb logo was little and I think it’s actually quite nice. And being that they’re one of the new{er} guys, I wanted to leave it there.

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{PACKAGING}

I didn’t opt for special packaging or sleeves for any of my books, but Apple sent theirs awesomely packaged in a cardboard sleeve with the Apple logo. Love! Although it ended up in the trash eventually, it was a really nice way to receive my book.

Apple's packaging

{EBOOKS & SALES POTENTIAL}

my book as an eBook

I was so so pleased to see that with Blurb, any book you create can also be purchased as an eBook for less than £2! Their eBooks are currently formatted in the .pub format for functionality with iBooks. So they can only be viewed on an iPhone, iPad or iPod but it says that other devices are coming soon! So how cool is that?!

If you want to sell your book to others, you can do that through both Blurb and Photobox. You can price your book so that there’s a profit which gets sent to you, although with the prices of printing, you have to price the books quite high in order to make a profit. So as wonderful as it would be to consider this a viable route for self-publishing, it isn’t really perfect for that function. But with the eBooks, you can capitalize on the new wave of people using devices for reading and make a great profit selling eBooks through Blurb! Hopefully they’ll release functionality for Kindle and other devices very soon.

{IN CLOSING}

So in closing, there are many different things to consider when choosing which book printer is right for you. It depends on what you aim to do with your book as well as your audience. Many times, price is the main factor in a decision, however quality is of utmost importance, especially when you want your project to be visually and sensually stimulating; pleasing to both the eyes and the fingertips. There are many things I loved about the Apple book and I loved that Photobox so often has BOGO deals so I can pass a copy on to a friend. But all things considered, I would say that Blurb came out on top. The ease of building the book combined with the forward-thinking way they’re harnessing current trends and technologies makes me very excited to keep my eye closely on Blurb in the future.

That said, you can see the whole book I made {HERE}! And this month, 100% of the profits from the book are being given to the House of the Heroes orphanage in the Philippines which is run by my close personal friends so I know exactly how the money is spent. So grab the eBook copy. I promise you’ll laugh your head off every time you look at this book!

Thank you so much for reading. It’s been fun looking into this topic and seeing my book printed in so many different ways.

Gear

• Camera: Canon 5dmkII
• Lens: 50mm f/1.2

Settings

• Shot in AV with Aperture: Between 1.2 and 2.8

Conditions

• Natural window light
• Somewhat sunny day, however it’s winter which made the light coming through the window very nice. Summer would have been a different story.

Props

• Muslin sling from Keri Meyers Photography
• Body suit from PepperLu
• Hair band from Golden Beam Accessories {she’s local and I needed it pronto!}
• Normal everyday beanbag
• Blanket
• Heavy duty background support stand

Editing

The images were edited with One Willow Presets ‘Beautiful Things’ collection for Lightroom. Skin retouching with Lightroom’s adjustment brush. Then taken into Photoshop for removal of the beanbag and added vignette.

• She faced the baby towards an open light source which lit up her eyes
• She was down on her level. I see these shots a lot, but sometimes they’re shot from too high.
• She utilized a wide aperture to create a depth of field which keeps the baby at the center of our attention. And if she was using an auto-mode like ‘portrait’, I would recommend starting to learn how to shoot in manual if you’re thinking of a long-term goal of learning photography.

A few things that Alyssa could work on next time?

• Being a little more mindful of the background. But the blur was helpful anyway! :)
• Focusing between the eyes to make this image sharper {it’s a bit soft at 100%}
• Composing it in landscape rather than portrait orientation so there would be more possibilities for re-thinking the image in the post-production stage.

This shot took just a tiny bit of editing. I cropped and re-composed the shot and then ran the ‘classic color’ action from Florabella’s Classic Workflow set and sharpened her eyes a little with MCP Action’s Eye Doctor. I then made a duplicate layer, blurred the bottom layer and masked the top layer away at the edges to make a sort of blurred vignette. And that’s it!

EVERYONE KEEP THOSE SHOTS COMIN. SEND YOUR {SHARP & WELL EXPOSED} PHOTOS TO EH@ELIZABETHHALFORD.COM

If your photo has been featured on Reader Photo Friday and you would like to purchase digital copies for printing yourself, please get in touch. Digital files are only $25 each and 100% of these monies goes to Compassion International to help us edit out poverty for our little guy Victor.

EVERYONE KEEP THOSE SHOTS COMIN. SEND YOUR {SHARP & WELL EXPOSED} PHOTOS TO EH@ELIZABETHHALFORD.COM

If your photo has been featured on Reader Photo Friday and you would like to purchase digital copies for printing yourself, please get in touch. Digital files are only $25 each and 100% of these monies goes to Compassion International to help us edit out poverty for our little guy Victor.

But don’t put your camera away yet! Try this little trick:

• Set your aperture unusually high. I used f/16 for this shot of one of my trees.
• Set your ISO low like around 400
• With the very high aperture and low ISO, you’ll need a slow shutter speed which means that you’ll need a tripod
• When you have that all set up, set your camera to self timer mode so that when you press the button to release the shutter, you aren’t jiggling the camera.
• You may want to manually focus or just focus as usual before hitting the shutter
• When you’re ready to go, press the shutter and wait for the self-timer to set the camera off. You could also use a remote trigger if you have one.
• That’s it! With the high aperture, you’ll get lights that look twinkly and your whole tree will be in focus!

I’d love to see your twinkly trees! Feel free to post them on my Facebook wall!

• Camera: 5DmkII
• Lens: 50mm f/1.2
• Weather: slightly cloudy, 3 hours before sundown
• Processed: Florabella Luxe II

I started out with little guy ben. We all hiked a little ways into the forest to get away from people and find a clearing where we could settle down for a bit. The light coming through the trees behind him was luscious and made for an idea backlit scene in which for me to work. So I started asking him things like "if your mum was a Star Wars character, which one would she be?" I think he said Jar Jar Binks :)

Another of the first shots of Ben. I always say that you can break the rules once you know how to master them. And so it's really important to know why/how to use the rule of thirds in composition. But once you do, you can then successfully break the rule. I like to sometimes photograph children dead-center. I feel that a photo like this is saying "Hi, I'm Ben. This is me." with no frills or anything complicating the experience of getting to know Ben!

Again, composed dead-center for a reason. "World, meet Amie. Amie, meet the world." I also got this shot while asking her silly questions. I think I asked her to close her eyes and think of her favorite candy and then pop her eyes open and tell me what it is. I shot from slightly below because I wanted her to be dominant and I just think that she's so.darn.cute

Now that you've met Amie and she's established that she's the boss, this is a more vulnerable, intimate portrait of her. This is her "yea, I'm sassy but I'm still only little" shot. I love braids as you know and I love this simple portrait which I composed slightly off-center. I get a shot like this by setting my subject in their space and then holding my camera to my eye while walking around them. I tell them "don't move, just follow me with your head." And then there's a moment where you know you've got it and hopefully only need to snap once.

And then we have James who is so much like my Elijah. Extremely smart, hard to get to stop talking. You either have to fit into James' mold or get the heck out cuz he ain't gonna sit and pose for anyone! A very free spirit who loves climbing trees. So when I turned around after photographing Amie and he was in a tree, I just went with it and the bokeh behind him turned out amazing. Of course, shot very nearly wide open and backlit. I love the way the light in the forest twinkles in his eyes and that laugh is genuine.

Nothing about James could be forced. I had to capture what was real. I think we were talking about Star Wars here and he said his brother would be Chewbacca.

Photographing kids together ain't easy. So here's where we started and it was a little stiff...

...so we let off some steam with some running...

...and ended here! Gorgeous kids, super fun session and so many laughs.

 

...from my first shot at a Beloved session of my own

I’ve promised for a long time that I’m going to talk about Beloved. I mentioned it last week in this post about using the Beloved concept for the first time in a family session and it was very successful.

I discovered Beloved by way of The Rock n Roll Bride blog when blogger Kat and her husband Gareth had a Beloved session here in England with a photographer named Marianne Taylor. I immediately sought Marianne out online, dropped my jaw at her work and then booked her for our own Beloved session. We had to wait about 4 months for that date to roll around and I was pretty much sick with excitement from that point on. I kept looking at that session with Kat & Gareth and wanting to know how she got such intimate shots.

Enter ‘Beloved’.

So I googled this word ‘Beloved’ and found that it is being known as a new genre in photography. The brain child of Jesh de Rox, Beloved is about capturing the essence of a couple who have been married for some time. As we were told at the beginning of our session, “this is not a photo shoot.” It was about us having an experience together and her being in the background capturing those moments. Those real moments which weren’t staged or forced. Every laugh was real, every smile genuine. But more on our own experience later…so yeah, Beloved is about inviting couples into an experience and being there to capture that experience. What they end up with is a snapshot of their relationship in its truest, deepest sense with no strings attached. And if they choose to display those images to continue seeing, they won’t just be pictures. They will be memories.

One of my favorite shots from our own Beloved session with Marianne Taylor.

When I found Jesh de Rox, the photographer who has birthed this concept, I listened to a speech he gave in Las Vegas in 2010 about Beloved. You can find it here on the bottom right of this page - just click play. It’s very long and a bit frustrating that you can’t see it as he’s speaking, but it was a good introduction to his mind and how he approaches Beloved. I still felt in the dark about Beloved after that – I didn’t really get it – but when he tweeted that he would be doing a webcast in the middle of the night UK time, I joined in. It was about 1am. Jesh is a very soft spoken and I think he’s brilliant but I have found it difficult to stay connected when he’s speaking. He kind of takes a really long time to say what he wants to say, but if you take him as he is, knowing that he is completely unique, you just might come away with something you didn’t have before. So after ‘meeting’ Jesh, I could understand where Beloved was coming from but as far as how to actually attain it? No clue.

After that webcast, there was a chance to buy his Beloved Field Guide at a discounted price. There was very little information about it online and I knew I couldn’t be the only one feeling completely in the dark so I bought it knowing that at least, I would be able to photograph it and do a review for people wondering what it was. At best, it could change my life. So when it came and I read through the cards, many of them made me laugh. I thought “there is no way I’m going to say that to another human being!” Things about feeling the other person’s love energies and filling yourself up with love. {I’m paraphrasing…I don’t remember if that’s exactly what it said}. Some of them were really fun to invite couples into an action scenario and I felt comfortable with those.

So with the new field guide under my arm, I invited my friends Marcus & Elbrie to be my first Beloved experiment as part of the filming for my wedding commercial. It was really fun and they’re great on camera. I did all of the fun invites & none of the soppy ones. So needless to say, the photos are fun & lively but not particularly deep or emotional. I was frustrated and just didn’t foresee how I’d be able to get the emotion I saw in that first session with Kat & Gareth. So I put down the field guide and decided that I wouldn’t ‘get it’ until I experienced it for myself. And then I began the months long wait for our session with Marianne.

It

felt

like

forever.

Two weeks ago, Steven and I dropped the three kids off at babysitters and headed to a park near London. We had a great time in the car laughing and singing our favorite songs and talking about our relationship. We picked Marianne up at her house just around the corner and spent over an hour in the park having the most wonderful time I think we’ve had together in years. To my amusement {and probably fate}, Marianne started by turning us towards each other and asking us to {yup, you guessed it} “feel the ground beneath our feet, feel each other’s beingness” and so on. And you know what?! I didn’t think there was anything weird about that! When I read it in the field guide, you’ll remember, I was like “nu uh..no way am I gonna get that soppy with people” but it clicked in that moment:

This isn’t about me. This is about them.

I dunno, maybe Marianne did feel weird the first few times she said these very deep things to total strangers, but in that moment, I found myself following her gentle direction as she did the opposite of what most photographers do: she turned my attention toward my husband, my partner, my mate in life. And it started to become clearer: this was not a photo shoot. She just happened to be there.

Within a few short moments, I didn’t even hear the click of her shutter. After our time together, we floated home and started the two week wait to see our images. We just saw them last night and Marianne has just blogged them today. We watched the gallery over and over and both shared tears.

Now, I really do believe that Beloved doesn’t just have to be for marries couples. If you grasp the concept that this is about photographing the moments that result from inviting anyone with a deep, connected, beloved relationship {mom/son, dad/daughter, husband/wife} then you can draw those real reactions -those genuine emotional responses- out of just about anyone. I’m really excited about continuing my exploration into Beloved and how it may help shape me into the photographer I’m going to be.

{Further Reading}

My review of the Beloved Field Guide {edited with my new perspective}

What I learned from my own Beloved session {by Brooke Snow}