Families in the Fall - Mine

Okay, okay, it's not like these families are mine. What happened was my extended family went to take a group picture and while we were there, I shot some pictures of my nephews, and my two sisters and their "families." So first, my favorite nephews in the world.

Jacob has to be the happiest baby I've ever seen. And can you believe how much he's grown since this?!


Max is a happy kid too, he's just a little camera shy. Well that, and he'd rather be off somewhere reaping havoc. But he wasn't sneaky enough - I got a few good shots of him.




And caleb loved the leaves. I remember when he was one year old we took him to a neighbors house and let him play in the leaves, but he just sat there. Actually, we had to start playing in the leaves for him, and once we started to bury him in the leaves he had had enough. For the record, we didn't actually bury him...just his legs. But look at him now! He's having a grand old time.



And here's my sister Angie and her "family." Yeah, it's just the two of them for now, but we'll see just how long that will last. Any bets?


And last but not least is my sister and her boyfriend, Mitch. He's a good guy, so I decided to take one of the two of them. Believe me, he cleans up really nice. Just kidding! :-P

Families in the Fall - The Neils

I had an amazing shoot with a young family last weekend that Angie and Kyler referred to me. There are two girls and two boys, all between the ages of 6 and 1, so you could say that we had our hands full. Lighting was perfect that afternoon and we came away with some awesome pictures. What I especially liked about this shoot was that we didn't just end up taking traditional family pictures all the time, but we focused a lot on candid shots of the kids, and if you know me, you know that I'm all about the candid shots. They're the ones that will be remembered long after the shoot is over because they're the ones that show real personality. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd much rather take a picture that will not only show how you looked at a specific moment in time, but also included a bit of your personality. The great thing about including these pictures in your family pictures is you can show how a lot of the family members interacted with each other, like mom playing with her little girl, or dad with the youngest boy on his shoulders. These images are proof of one thing, that this family can do more than smile when they say cheese (or cheescake, for the younger boys sake) - they prove that this is one happy family. Scott and Rachelle, I hope you guys like them.

This little guy was loving those pumpkins!






This little pumpkin became everybody's favorite.





Who didn't love playing in the leaves as a child?






And here's the big family picture. I love when sunlight shines through leaves. It makes them glow, deep red, in this case.



It's hard to focus when your subject is wandering in grass as tall as he is. The camera wants to focus on the grass and not on the subject. If this shot would have been in focus, it would have been my favorite of the day.

Families in the Fall - Dan and Kira

I had about 10 minutes a few days ago to take some pictures of my brother and his family, so I went up Ogden canyon for the incredible yellow leaves they have up there. Brin seemed to be in her own little world and so I was very surprised to see that 10 minutes was enough to get just one where she was looking at the camera. Fall is the best time of year to take family pictures, isn't it? Now if only I would have had an hour....

Fall Pictures

I love this time of year. I'm really glad that the weather decided to cooperate and let us have a fall this year! I've taken a few fall pictures and here are some of those. I'm going to have more later this week to post, so be sure to check back soon. Family shots in the fall are the best! But for now, I give you these two.

This is another of my mom's wedding cakes. That chocolate fondant is the coolest thing in the world. Isn't it perfectly in season?! I just went to snap this quick picture for her and if I would have been the photographer at the wedding, I would have taken one of her bridesmaids too, because they all were dressed in different fall colors. It was so awesome!




This was a panorama that I took up by Snowbasin. I took seven pictures (handheld) and stitched them together in Photoshop to create this panorama that can be printed easily up to 15" tall by 40" wide! Now I just have to get me a printer that big. I'm really excited to take more of these panoramas in the future. Too bad it doesn't look very impressive at this resolution, which I could barely print at 1" tall. Oh well.

Cory and Bonnie - Really

I rented a new lens for this groomal session. It's so much fun for me to rent different lenses from time to time because of the different things that each lens is good at. There really isn't one perfect lens out there for every situation and so I'm very grateful for the guys over at Pictureline for letting me rent this lens from them. What's really interesting is this lens wouldn't have been my first choice, but because the other lens wasn't available, this lens was 'second best.' Once I got shooting, I realized how awesome this lens really is! It costs $2,000, so it's not feasible to have it in my collection... for the moment. Renting lenses like these would be like trading a friend your 10 year old regular car for his or her Acura RL for your commute. And in case any of you were wondering, I did not cry when I returned it, I was just glad for the good times we had together. Yes sir, Canon's 85 1.2/L II lens is nothing short of spectacular!