I photographed this family a few months ago. The client was the mother of one of the grooms for a wedding I shot a while back. She specifically asked for a family documentary session. Her oldest grandchild was celebrating a birthday and all of her family was coming to their beach house to celebrate.
This is great...such a genuine approach to it, and also it's very nice to see some family portrait work from you (I am so used to seeing your wedding work). 4, 6, 7, 8 and 24 are some of my favs.
Really good stuff buddy. Favorites include 4,6,9,24. I'd like to see more on the bottom of 10 (reflection) and 19. I love and prefer the documentary work, but I'm sure the family will also be happy to have some portraits of them together.
Love the REAL interactions - like in 20, grandmom smiling patiently while the little dude wails his lungs out. 24, the baby giving the dog the stinkeye while guarding his food.
Love this work.
Honestly, If I were to offer a crit, I'd say get rid of #2 - we have the dog in other shots, and 2 doesn't really stand out for me.
you're a very good photographer and it shows in the perspectives you chose, however, for this series, i really like your processing. perhaps you've done nothing different and it's all in my monitor but i don't think so. i think you've done a really fine job for these people. thanks for sharing here.
Glad to see that you're still around, Chuck. Of course maybe you've been posting like crazy in Weddings, I just haven't had a chance to get over there for probably months now.
It was interesting to see more of the posed stuff than I typically think of you doing. But darn it all, you are even doing that very well :-)
11 is particularly impressive to me, everybody spaced out so perfectly framed by what I assume are grandma and grandpa. 12 too, just the right time to get that football nice and high, but still in the frame. Love the framing in 18. 21 is such a good posed portrait, wonderful expressions/body language. #2 seemed kinda outta place for me.
I'm really liking your color processing, seems much different from what I've seen in the past.
Fan-diddly-tastic chuck. #12 is a fantastic catch...
I need to start bookmarking you, zalmy and david's posts so I can reference people to them to explain the difference between a photograph, and a snapshot.
Your camera takes really good pictures.
The only ones I'm too stupid to understand are 5 and 27. I (stupidly) think 5 has a poor angle to it and 27 is just not that interesting (because I don't understand art). Besides that I think they'd have been happy to have walked away with 5 of these shots, so I'm sure they were thrilled. Even the family portraits are great. Such energy and connection in them.
Just wondering, how long did you actually spend with them?
great stuff dude, such a keen eye you have for telling a story. there were several shots, like #11, that gave a me a real sense of what it would be like to watch my family do what they do.
Thanks a lot all! The comments are always appreciated!
I feel like my color processing was finally getting to a point that I liked when I was using Photoshop. Then I bought a 5d3 and my version of PS didnt support the RAW files. So I reluctantly switched to LR4. So my color editing really suffered. I feel like I'm getting on track now with the help of my friend and boss, Tony Hoffer and my studio manager.
Eric, you are so stupid...and how dare you not like some of my images. I spent three hours with them. Great family.
Goodegg, this was the lovely New Jersey Shore (Sea Isle to be specific).
