Jeff

The Secret to Great Family Reunion Beach Portraits

For many families, the reunion at the beach is a big deal. Everybody together at one time, in an idyllic setting, enjoying each other — truly a once in a lifetime experience. But getting everybody together for a family portrait can be a chore, and not everyone in the family approaches the experience with a great attitude. Everyone wants the irreplaceable portrait of the whole family, but a portrait of stiff and serious people isn’t going to cut it. The beach is a place to unwind and have fun, and the family portrait should reflect not only the presence of the family members, but the personality and relationship of the family members. There is a huge difference between recording an event and capturing emotion. And those emotions have to be real, even if they are not conventional “smiles”.

Here’s the secret: your photographer has to interact with your family members, and that requires eye contact. If your photographer has his eye in the camera viewfinder, there is only so much that she can do to get you happy. She can talk to you, but that’s about it. The secret is for the photographer to get out from behind the camera. To do that, he has to use a tripod, and a remote control shutter release. This technique allows the photographer to move — whether it’s to jump in and tickle a surly toddler, point at Grandpa and ask something foolish, break out a rubber chicken, put on a clown nose. . . generally play the excited clown role until the group lightens up and begins to laugh. And when you have laughter, you can capture true happiness. From a photographer’s standpoint, we know that expression is what it’s all about, especially with the kids.

So why don’t more photographers use this technique? Maybe they don’t know technically how to do it. But it’s probably because they don’t have enough experience dealing with Moms looking at proofs of the session. It’s the kiss of death to hear “that’s not his real smile”, but it takes hundreds of sessions to figure out how to get the smiles that make your heart skip a beat when you see them in pictures. That’s the kind of portrait you want.

HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH FLYING BIRDS

Shooting birds as they fly is one of the hardest jobs in photography. It seems like you shoot all morning and get maybe 3 decent shots. But there is a better way to get a higher success rate. You just need to set your camera for “bird shooting mode”.

BIRD SHOOTING MODE

Set your autofocus drive to “continuous” or “servo”, since you will be shooting moving subjects.
Use all autofocus points, not just the center point.
Turn image stabilization OFF
Use Shutter Priority, and set your shutter speed at 1/1000 or higher
Set your metering mode to “spot metering”
Set ISO to “auto”
If focus is a problem, try center point focusing, still in continuous or servo focus mode
If you are using a long, heavy lens, you might want to use a monopod for support. The tradeoff is that it will be harder to track the bird if he is moving fast
Set your drive mode to “continuous”or “multiple” and shoot fast!

Romance at the Ft. Myers Beach

I recently had the honor to photograph a wedding proposal on the beach in Naples, Florida. These weren’t the structured “engagement photos” that many couples have made, rather this was the actual process of Damen asking Samantha to marry him. These photographs capture the love and joy they feel for each other as well as documenting a major life event.

The photo session was orchestrated by Damen. He asked Samantha if she would like to take a romantic beach walk to see the sunset, and what women would say no to romance? Meanwhile, I was also on the beach “photographing birds” with a long telephoto lens, but my real purpose was to capture the engagement as it happened. The emotions were real, and the photographs were “once in a lifetime” quality. What a great assignment!

Senior Portrait Session at the Naples pier

The beach is a great place for family pictures, but it’s also wonderful for a senior portrait!

Here’s Maddie, a high school senior at her photo shoot in Naples. We photographed in the shadow of the pier for smooth light, but when the sun got low we were able to capture these beautiful portraits on the beach. Maddie was glowing, and so was I! This is one of my favorite types of beach portrait photography. Her family will cherish these beach pictures for years to come.

How To Be A Successful Photographer, v.2

PUT THE HOURS INTO IT

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, eﬀort, and stamina.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, etc., but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong. Being good at anything is like figure skating—the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That’s what many people conveniently forget.

If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn’t try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic, heroic- quest thing about it.

I would do something far simpler: I would ﬁnd that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, Internet-surfing, going out, or whatever. But who cares?

How To Be Creative
Hugh MacLeod

Ft Myers Beach is a Happy Place for Beach Portrait Photography

Ft Myers Beach Portrait Photography should be fun!

Don’t settle for old fashioned stiff and expressionless beach portraits of your family. When we hit the sand in Ft Myers for beach portrait photography, I am going to work hard to put your personality into your beach portraits. Ft Myers Beach Portrait Photography is different from shooting in the studio or your back yard. It’s a happy place. You’ve come here to have fun. So let’s have fun at your photography session!

Lightroom CC Now Processes HDR

Lightroom CC now offers HDR processing. This is significant because you no longer have to export your files to NIK HDR, Photoshop, or Photomatix. When you use the Lightroom CC, the output is a 16 bit DNG file of considerable size and sharpness. You can process the DNG in Lightroom CC, and the exposure latitude is now 10 f/stops in either direction. The other basic controls work the same as with a non-HDR image. The LR HDR DNG file looks the same as the middle/normal file you used to create the HDR. I think there is a minimum of tone mapping in Lightroom HDR, and if you have a large dynamic range you are trying to capture, you may get better results with NIK HDR. But there is no color or structure or contrast added with the LR HDR, unlike the NIK.

You can see the excellent tutorial at the Adobe website: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/how-to/hdr-merge-for-high-contrast-scenes.html?trackingid=1K8FDJHY&mv=email

My Favorite Sharpening Action

Jeff Schuewe has developed an unsharp mask sharpening action that I think is the cat’s meow. It looks like this:

Unsharp Mask (Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask)

Amount: 20%

Radius: 50 pixels

Threshold: 0

I suggest that you create a new action in Photoshop and give this tool a workout. You will love it!

If you want instructions for creating a Photoshop action, go here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/creating-actions.html

Naples Beach Portrait Photography: Plan “B”

Contrary to the PR we send to the North, Florida sometimes has lousy weather. On portrait day we had cold, windy, dreadful weather that made Naples beach photography impossible. What to do? Plan “B”! Shoot indoors. In this case we used the lobby of the clients’ condo building for some wonderful portraits, some with a Christmas tree in the background. The day after this session, the family left Naples, but they will always have these Plan “B” portraits to cherish. They even have a digital file that they can use for the 2016 Christmas card.

Capturing Personality with Marco Island Beach Portraits

We usually work to photograph the clients in a relaxed, casual manner, looking at the camera with a pleasant expression. But wait! There’s more! Depending on the client, we can frequently capture joy and laughter in the interaction of the subjects. With this couple, their recent engagement put them in a very happy place that was easy to tap into. This made the session all the more significant to them, because now we can show both what they look like in a portrait, but also how they feel about each other.

Jeff

Call 980.226.0803