Yesterday's little lady (c&c)

divamum

C&C always welcomed!

Doing a speed-edit on these - they're intended as a gift for father's day, but due to conflicting schedules (and weather!) yesterday was the first day we could shoot, so it's a little tight for ordering prints etc and I want to get her at least a small set today. I have way, way, WAY too many shots to go through - I reckoned give how fast she moves that I should probably overshoot for safety... and I do believe I was right. Just keeping her in the frame was the hard part!......

This nearly-5-year-old is a total firecracker! No surprise, given that her mom is an absolutely brilliant stage performer, but oh boy did she keep me on my toes. She's a total natural, though - no fear/confidence issues and really very cooperative for a kid this age working with a stranger. I don't shoot kids that often - definitely not my specialty - but this one was an absolute blast. We had a *great* time :lust

We had kind of icky light, though - the shoot was 6.30 (very nice time of day right now), but it was cloudy, and before we'd done everything I hoped for we got a really heavy shower and had to call it day (aside: 5-in-1 reflectors make excellent umbrellas when you're stuck!).

I'm finding myself struggling to settle on a processing style for these; I've got a few variants below, but I'm not quite sure I'm nailing it. :scratch

Started out in a location I've been dying to use, at a local park - it's a white stone building at the entrance... which just happens to have a white stone block which can work nicely to sit on (and is just high enough to keep little children in one place... ) The light bounces all around the building and the matching stone paving, all of which look out over water - natural reflectors everywhere! 7d + 580ex camera right through a 45" shoothrough umbrella.


Comments always welcomed!


1.

2. They'd planned to bring roses from the get-go, and they were an awesome prop, especially with Bryce's great suggestions (see other thread)! Was soooo easy to get cute expressions with her - the kid's a natural :lust



3 Played with some textures on this can't decide if I like it or not :scratch



4. Looking for the penny....



5. Once she got down, lots of looking at the water...

a

b I think I like this version. Maybe. Or not. (Don't you love how decisive I am on this set?! lol)



5 We then moved to the big expanse of green in the park and let her run around... (note to self: when shooting children I'd like a 35-300 2.8 lens please. That only weighs maybe 1lb, and costs less than a house.... :lol3)



6. This is the series that is making me crazy - all processing suggestions welcomed! Her dad had bought her this Rapunzel wedding dress which of course she loooovveees and mom wanted some shots, but by now the light stank and it was just hard to come up with good shots. Yes, I was using on-camera flash as fill (pointless trying to use off-camera), but they just seem a bit blah to me. Plus the moving target was FAST lol. (I really watned to go down to the trees and do some "princess in the woods", but by the time we got to that it was already pouring and we had to end the session).

So.... I love the twirl (we got lots of twirls but processing these is proving elusive.... All ideas welcomed!

a.

b I think I like this, but I suspect Little Girls will be outraged that it's not really pink

Hackbone

As a dad of two girls I love 1 & 6.

novicesnapper

Lol, have one myself, she's 27 now but still my little girl, and several female granddaughters. I scrolled down and went for #3, but with a portrait crop. I can see that sitting on his desk at the office. Yep, went back and looked again, #3 for me lol.

Hackbone

Young whipper snapper!!! My little ones are 32 & 34.....but I still love em. Smile every time I see them.

Gary752

I don't have any of my own (thank God!), but I do have 2 nephews and a neice, that between them have 12 of their own. That's enough to keep me busy, and broke during the holiday season!:D

GaryB

Bryce Wilson

I'm a BIG fan of two and three. Two spectacular expressions that are most engaging. They also have a nice airy feel to them.

Five, six and seven are outside of my range as what I consider portraiture. I know that the "photojournalism" style is MOST popular these days, but I'm just not familiar enough with it to comment.

Bet they go over big though.

divamum

Thanks Bryce! Yeah, I was happy to get ANY semi-posed portraits from her; I intentionally started with those at the beginning of the session before the novelty had worn off, and we did get quite a few terrific shots in the series' above.

I admit that I like little kids in "lifestyle" candid shots - I'd rather catch them in action just being who they are and typically suggest a park or "activity" setting when I do these kinds of shoots (I don't do that many, but you know what I mean!). I really wanted to do some "princess in the woods" semi-posed stuff too - we had the trees and the lake which would have been gorgeous with that little dress - but when the rain started it was impossible and we had no choice but to call it a day. We got plenty to choose from even without those and, judging by the print order from this first batch, mom is ECSTATIC!

Btw, I'll probably be posting a few more to this thread when I get through processing them - there was an adorable series of her with my folding stool (the little plastic kind); she was absolutely fixated on it and determined to figure out how it opened/closed (which she did), and then triumphantly sat herself down on it. It was very cute and, even though backgrounds and light weren't in my favour, it's the kind of series I know that I as a parent would LOVE to have for posterity, so I'm glad I caught it despite the imperfections. I'm not sure I've ever cut off as many fingers and toes as I did in this shoot (this little one moved FAST!!!) but I also reckon that in some of them it's definitely a case where "expression trumps perfection", and the images (I think) work well despite

VayCayMom

awwww cute girl ! Here is my quick 2 cents #1 she seems washed out....#2, 3 and 4 (clone hair over bottom lip) great and love the texture, #5 love how her lower lip is visible, love the way her hair is blowing, #5 I want to get a better look at her smile, it makes the picture !!! maybe a tighter crop, the twirls stump me, they need something but I don't know what, since the grass is not exactly looking wonderful like lush spring time grass,maybe a tighter crop. I dunno. Maybe pop the purples in her dress a lot??

divamum

Thanks Caroline & Trudy! Yeah, I'm still playing with processing. For some reason I'm finding this one hard - I think the blah light means I'm trying a little too hard to perk it up, and start overdoing things a little.... and then pulling back TOO much.

Here are a few more....

7. This kid has a range of expressions most of us adults can envy!

8. She was absolutely fascinated by my folding stepstool - for little fingers to figure that out without help (which she did) was pretty amazing, actually (especially since she avoided pinching herself).

anonymouscuban

I like that first collage. Really like how you processed the shot in it. Is she singing?

divamum

She did do a lot of singing (mom is a singer, so no surprise there). And thanks to whoever offered up that "Twinkle twinkle little pizza" trick", we got some AWESOME giggles out of her. 'Course, getting her to STOP singing was then the challenge... We had multiple version of Twinkle, the My Little Pony song, and multple versions of her very own song. She was very good, she's just a fearless kid with a BIG personality! The only sign of "wait - who is crazy lady with the camera telling me what to do? I don't think so!" was she did figure out to turn her head away from me, and we had to resort to tricks to distract her enough to ignore me. Her mom is just wonderful with her and 100% picked up on when I needed her to step in, so it was a very smooth-running shoot in that regard. If only we'd had the light I wanted!!