Pregnancy session

jttphoto

These were taken during an impromptu shoot during a Halloween party of some friends. I do a lot of forensic photography so photographing living, happy people is something I'm working on. C&C is most welcome. One thing I know I need work on is lighting, so suggestions in that area would be appreciated.

l.k.madison

Did I read "forensic photography"??? Do we want to know?

jttphoto

Yes you read forensic photography correctly. I can't showcase a lot of my work due to its graphic and evidentiary nature. I got into photography so I could take better photographs of collision scenes for accident reconstruction. Now I like to take photos of people who are happy to offset what I normally see through the lens. It helps keep me balanced.

woytek

jttphoto wrote: »

These were taken during an impromptu shoot during a Halloween party of some friends. I do a lot of forensic photography so photographing living, happy people is something I'm working on. C&C is most welcome. One thing I know I need work on is lighting, so suggestions in that area would be appreciated.

I'm always working on my own technique, but here are some pointers that might help a bit:

I can tell you do forensic photography. There's nothing wrong with that--you just need to think in a slightly different way with regard to lighting. There are lots of good books that go through the art and technique of photographing (living!) people. I like the Steve Sint book on portrait photography. He goes through lighting, posing, lens choice, etc., in a progression that I think makes a lot of sense. I still refer back to the book when I'm looking for posing ideas (or to figure out why something I tried to do just didn't work).

Start shooting in manual exposure mode. Forensic photography is often about seeing as many details as possible, especially since the details that might be important might not come out until well into the investigation. Portrait photography is often about controlling focus, controlling what the viewer sees, and even controlling what the viewer feels when looking at your work. To that end, aperture control is going to become your friend. You will likely find yourself choosing an aperture in order to control your focal plane, then fixing your shutter speed to deal with balancing ambient vs. flash lighting, then going back and changing your sensitivity (ISO) in order to get your aperture and shutter speed and lighting where you need them to get the shot.

If you haven't already started experimenting with this, start bouncing your flash when you are indoors taking non-forensic photographs. The lighting will be much more diffused and will have a more pleasing quality to it. If you have a diffusion dome for your camera, use that to help increase the effect.

Read lots of stuff here--I'm always learning stuff here.

Check out the strobist blog if you want to learn a lot in a very short period of time about using strobes for lighting.

Keep practicing. I'm always practicing.

I hope some of this helps a bit.

jonathan

kdog

#1 and 2 don't say "pregnancy" at all. By shooting square and cutting off the lower half of her belly, you'd never know she was pregnant. #3 is ok, but what's that background, a brown shower curtain? Place your subjects further away from a bad background like that and use a shallow depth of field to isolate your subject from it. #4 is kind of creepy with these three severed hands in the frame. Google "pregnancy shoot" to get some ideas for the next time in case the opportunity should arise again. She doesn't look too far along, so maybe you can arrange a more formal shoot later in her term and have another go at it.