Congratulations to dawnkyung for winning Feature Thread of the Week with 2 votes - View Previous Winners
This is a recent session I did in studio - the family was great despite the kiddos being fairly young! My three year old definitely would not have done as good a job as the youngest kiddo in this session did.
They also wanted to include their puppy, which I was happy to do!
I love family portraits, but man they are a lot of work.
As always, thanks for looking and for any comments and feedback you may have.
Great work with the young ones. I really enjoy the last photo, pose and lighting work very well for me. Has a bit of that old-world painting feel. Looks like you used one of those u-shaped reflectors, it adds a lot of interest to the eyes.
Great work Dawn. I'm new to shooting portraits so I have a question about the man's shirt in the first two shots. Are there more wrinkles than normal in his shirt? Was his shirt iron and pressed when he arrived? I'm only asking because I'm curious what to expect of any future clients. Thanks.
These are lovely, solid, professional images. The family I suspect was thrilled.
Biggest nit I have is that his shirt doesn't fit anything. I'm generally biased against collared shirts without a sportcoat or other layer in these shots as its almost always more flattering to layer, but additionally it seems to jar with the other carefully considered color schemes. Like, he doesn't have to match everyone else (the girl in front in the red series is fine, partly because her dress references the skin tones and partly because the dress is special enough to seem like a deliberate accent in the shot), but his blah gray shirt feels to me like his wife dragged him there and he was less invested.
This has nothing to do with your skill as a photographer, but since you clearly seem to have issues like lighting and posing under control, I think being aggressive with clients about guiding wardrobe can separate very good shots from really excellent, and why I don't think the shots with him in them represent the best of your excellent portfolio.
I do like the lighting, compositions and colors, but for me, I might tone down the software effects on their faces just a bit. I once did a family shoot with similar editing and the client said..."That doesn't even look like us". So, from then on we shoot with less editing and more use of black flags for better control of contrast. Great poses and backdrop/props, but the color of the gentleman's shirt is decidedly unmatched for the overall aesthetic.
Evan Baines wrote:
This has nothing to do with your skill as a photographer...
I respectfully disagree. Part of being a professional photographer includes wardrobe consultation. Clients should be encouraged to bring in several selections if possible.
Since these images are so heavily edited anyway, a last resort would be to change the shirt color in post.
Awesome!