Two happy humans celebrating the start of the shortened 2013 NHL season.

Hockey Day, 2013

With the lockout shortened NHL season, we went almost four months without watching our beloved Blackhawks.

But with the season starting on January 19th, we were all set to go and did a photo shoot in our favorite Hawks gear.

Hockey Mama

Hawks Family

In the Net

More Photos

You can see all the photos from our Hockey Day shoot in the Hockey Day, Jan ’13 album.

Oh, and by the way, our hometown Hawks beat the defending champion LA Kings in the season opener.

A sleepy baby Bella in her holiday dress next to her teddy bear.

Baby Bella

I first did baby portraits for little Bella back when she was just three weeks old.

So when her parents asked me to shoot family portraits for their holiday cards and some extra shots with Bella’s grandparents, I knew it was going to be fun seeing how much she’s grown in five months.

Holiday Family Portrait

Mama Kiss

Happy Baby

More Photos

You can see more photos from the shoot in the Baby Bella Portraits, Dec ’12 gallery, and another big “Thank You” to Bella’s parents for letting me capture their beautiful family.

Baby Closeup

Giggle

Mama and Christian

Last Year

I thought it’d be fun to share the holiday portrait from the previous year as well.

The Difference a Year Makes

The first year we did this photo shoot, our son was just about to celebrate his first birthday. Everything around him was still new, and his bond with his Mama meant he’d stay still in her arms a lot longer.

A year later, he’s a lot more independent, and it has become difficult to get him to focus more than 5 seconds at a time.

The trick we’ve come up with to keep him smiling and giggling, is for me to run circles around him while he’s being held, along with a little peek-a-boo as well. These photos prove it can be effective, and while it’s fun for me, too, it’s also exhaustive.

More Photos

See a few more photos from this mini-shoot in the Holiday Portraits, Nov ’12 gallery.

As far as more catch up posts, four more to go and then I should be caught up. We did our first snow portrait session of 2013 yesterday, and I’ll have a few of those shots on Facebook soon before the full shoot is posted here.

Highlights

Innocent

On the Move

With Mama

Bonus Shot

In addition to the standard three picks from this shoot, I wanted to include this one as somewhat of an outtake. As often as he seems to love the camera, it’s fun when we get expressions like this one – even if the shot isn’t perfect.

Pouty Lip

More Photos

As with all the other featured photos, you can check out the full photo shoot in the updated Galleries section here at the new website, or go directly to the Halloween, Oct ’12 gallery.

Thanks,
– Kris

Today’s featured portrait session was from a relatively warm October afternoon in Park Ridge.

Pondering

Model Pose

Climbing Down

More Photos

This was one of the longer, more productive shoots with some great looks and poses from someone six weeks shy of his second birthday.

Check out the rest of the photos in the Park Ridge Portraits, Oct ’12 gallery.

The New Website

I’ll have a formal announcement of the new website design over at my development site shortly, but this is the first post following the updates.

There are still a few tweaks needed, but overall I’m pretty happy with it.

Let me know what you think of the new design in the comments below or share your thoughts on my Facebook page.

Thanks,
– Kris

But, here I am, back after spending the last 4 weeks working on my new photography App, and I’m ready to get back to updating the website and blog once again.

What’s Coming

The main thing to look for this week is my new photography App that’s currently waiting for review for the App Store. You’ll be able to have all my best work, literally at your fingertips. And with automatic updates, you’ll always be current with the latest photo shoots.

Next, to align with the App itself, I’m contemplating a minor redo of the main navigation of the website here to match some of the same categories the App features. The primary difference will be around how photo shoots are organized, as the current navigation structure is a little cumbersome.

Depending on how that goes, I might even toy with a few new theme ideas like I did with my other sites in the last half of last year.

Finally, I’ll be posting the missing highlights from about six photo shoots that I did between now and the last post in August.

That’s about it for now, so don’t stray too far from the blog or Facebook in the coming days.

As always, thanks for reading!

- Kris

I shot these images literally outside our front door, next to a gazebo area at our home. While the shoot itself didn’t last very long, the image featured above is definitely in my Top 3 for last year.

Green Ball

Kick

Drifting Stare

More Photos

As usual, you can find more photos from the photo shoot in the Home Gazebo, Aug ’12 gallery.

Things have been so busy as of late, it actually took me a vacation to stop working on almost everything and get back to being a full-time father and spending some time with my camera again.

About this Photo

Today’s featured photo was a follow up – a tradition, if you will – to the family portrait we took in Door County last October.

October 2011

August 2012

It’s always nice when I get a chance to step in front of the camera every now and then to capture how fast our son is growing – and us along with him.

This month’s photo was taken at the Cana Island Lighthouse in Bailey’s Harbor, Door County, Wisconsin.

I knew after looking our plans for this trip up to Door County where I wanted to try our annual family portrait, and I couldn’t be happier with how it came out (except, of course, if our son was looking straight ahead next time).

We were fortunate enough to get our son to cooperate at the age of 20 months for this plus another shoot later that evening. Compared to much younger he was at only 10 months last October, it was a huge difference.

Once we made it back to the hotel we were staying at, we managed to do another set of portraits overlooking our view of Sturgeon Bay.

Sturgeon Bay Family Portrait, August ’12

By this point, he was getting the hang of the flash going off at the end of the 10-second timer peeps, and he seemed to be having fun with it.

More Photos

The other photos I took of us over the weekend have been added to the photo shoots section, under the title Door County Family Portraits, Aug ’12.

It wasn’t a full, weekend-long photo shoot, but just enough to capture the memories we were sharing while we had this time together.

For more regular captures of this long weekend, I took to Instagram with the #summer and #roadtrip hashtags to build out a more complete view of our activities as they happened. You can view those photos here or find me on Instagram as “krisnelsonphoto” to see more.

Daddy’s Girl

Dreaming Princess

Eyes Closed

Precious

Family Portrait

More Photos

For more photos from this shoot, check out the Baby Bella, July ’12 gallery.

And many thanks to Bella’s parents for letting me capture these precious memories of their beautiful, new family.

– Kris

Photo Story

I haven’t shared much about my work with Instagram here yet, but after capturing and creating this image on Sunday, I thought it was a good time to start sharing here.

This image was one of those you’ve probably seen before during the summer, right before or after sunset. You’re driving relatively East and you check your mirror and see a display like the one above. That’s pretty much what happened here.

As I drove, I begged for a red light, and at the first safe moment, I grabbed my iPhone and snapped the original version. From there, later in the evening, I followed what has become my standard Instagram workflow and shared it online.

My Instagram Workflow

You may have read me talking about the Snapseed App here on the blog before, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s a key part of my Instagram workflow. Let’s use this image and walkthrough that workflow, shall we?

The Original

As with anything photography related, it always helps to have a good starting image to work with. At this point, I tend to stick with the original Apple Camera app instead of working with a few others I’ve downloaded. You might have great things to say about those others, but I just haven’t played with them long enough to convince me to switch.

From the original, I typically jump right into Snapseed before for some basic Tune Image changes. From there, I try out the Drama settings, and if that doesn’t work, I just go into Details and wrap-up.

Snapseed Version

Above is the Snapseed Version prior to going into Instagram. Once I select and crop the image square, I try out the Lux feature (the name for that lower left icon). Even if I’m already happy with the image out of Snapseed, I check anyway – as you can be surprised from time-to-time.

As everyone else, I flip through the filters – especially if it’s a portrait. For most of my crafted images, however, I go filter-less, as in this case.

Instagram Version

And that’s pretty much it. For most images, I can snap, edit, and post in less than a minute – which is really sweet. For images like the one above, I obviously had to wait until I was out of the car before the edit and post steps.

But even then, I was able to edit in Snapseed and post to Instagram while waiting for the barista at Starbucks to make my drinks.

At home, I threw this comparison images to better illustrate the steps along the way for this image.

More Instagrams

I plan on sharing more about my Instagram work on the website here, but until then, the best way to follow along my images is by following me as “KrisNelsonPhoto” on Instagram.

If you’re not on Instagram yet, stay tuned to the site for more updates on how to browse my photos without the App.

Have Questions or Tips?

Do you have any tips or Apps that you use in your mobile workflow – Instagram or otherwise – that you’d like to share? I’m always interested in trying out new apps, so do share if you have something you use regular that you would work without.

And if you had questions, please do post them here or on Facebook and I’d be glad to dive into anything deeper.

Thanks for reading,
– Kris