Catching up on photo shoots from April, I stumbled across this sequence of images that were just too adorable not to share.

Before I fill in the story, I think I’ll let the images tell the tale first.

Mad

Reaching

All Better

Back Story

As our son gets older, his free spirit tends to influence him more than our kind direction. Here, I wanted to shoot my wife and son together while sitting on the bench – but he wanted nothing to do with it. Hence the tantrum.

Shortly after abandoning that idea, he started to calm down and reach for Mama.

Finally, he found comfort in Mama’s arms for a sweet, family moment. Priceless.

More Photos

For more photos from this shoot, check out the Park Portraits, Apr. ’12 gallery.

Over the weekend, I was waiting for an oil change and playing with the Snapseed App on my iPhone, when I edited and posted this photo on my Facebook page. When I returned home, I shared it on my Maui Facebook page, and it was a hit.

Pleased with the reception it received on Facebook, I decided to toy around with another Maui photo from that same trip last year. This time, it was this original banyan tree photo from Lahaina (which itself was an HDR image).

Original

Black and White

Vintage

Sharp

Grunge

Feel free to leave a comment as to which version is your favorite of the group.

As I shared on the one Facebook post I linked to above, it’s pretty amazing how we can now have these smartphones and tablets wherever we go, and with our photos at our fingertips, build endless creations in just minutes.

While it doesn’t actually replace being there in Maui and shooting new images, it certainly keeps the creative juices flowing. I’m sure I’ll have a few more posts like this in the near future, so stay tuned if you wanted to see more.

– Kris

Mama and son posing for a Mother’s Day portrait session.

Back Story

What more could you give the mother of a young family for Mother’s Day than time with the family she loves and beautiful portraits for her to always remember this perfect moment in time.

And that’s exactly what we set out to do this past Sunday for my wife, taking her out for a picnic and photo shoot back to the same place we took the first formal portraits of our son back on his sixth month birthday. Instant memories, for sure.

Even though we love that our son is so much more mobile now than he was 11 months ago, it comes with the trade-off in not wanting to stay still for photos at this age. While it was certainly a challenge for both my wife and I, we managed to pull it off, and come up with a few new tricks to try next time.

52 to Two Project

As with previous shoots involving our son this year, I selected 3 of them to be included as the latest installment of my 52 to Two project. It still hasn’t returned to being an every week effort, but there are still a few missing shoots to post and many, many more weeks left to go this year.

Full Photo Shoot

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos from our Mother’s Day portrait session, check out the Mother’s Day Portraits, 2012 photo shoot page.

Our son posing for portraits while Mama gets ready for Easter dinner.

The photo shown above is actually a cropped version to fit the blog format. Here’s the full image:

Back Story

Thanks to my wife, our son is usually better dressed than I am, especially on the weekend.

But when he put on his Sunday bests for a big Easter dinner with her family this year, I had to break out the camera and take some shots. Besides, our son and I had a little time to kill while she was still getting ready herself.

Two Sessions

The photos from Easter were broken down into two sessions. The first being at home with natural light coming through the balcony doors, and the second being outdoors after Easter dinner had ended.

The outdoor session was a little trickier because of the harsh light, and the fact that our son had way too much energy to sit still and pose long enough in any one spot. I’m afraid that’s going to be the usual case for the foreseeable future, so I’m hoping to get a lot of practice at it.

52 to Two Project

In addition to the photo above, these other two photos have also been included in my 52 to Two project, which is practically on life support these days. No time to dwell on the missed goals, however, just looking towards moving forward.

Full Photo Shoot

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos from these two Easter photo shoots, you can check out the Easter Portraits, 2012 photo shoot page.

First, I wanted to say Thank You to all the students and parents that allowed me to capture their portraits on their special night. While many of you were only in front of my camera for a mere moment, I hope these images captured before your prom help you remember a wonderful time in your lives.

And a bigger thank you to the Karlins for not only hiring me for the night, but allowing me to take over the largest room in their house to setup my travelling portrait studio, all while entertaining a houseful of guests.

Prints Available

Prints from Friday night’s portrait session are now available for purchase online at http://store.krisnelsonphoto.com/Portraits.

If you’d like to learn more about the ordering process, you can click Order Prints from the menu here on the website to read more.

The prints available online are from a professional photo lab, printed on your choice of premium photo paper, and shipped to wherever you’d like.

Alternatively, I am providing the Karlin family a few CDs that include all the photos from Friday night’s shoot, and photo release letters should you wish to have your photos printed elsewhere. Please contact them to borrow a copy of the CD and the letter.

Special Requests

Each photo available online has already gone through a thorough retouching process, but if you have any additional retouching requests, please email me at info@krisnelsonphoto.com with the details and the 4-digit photo number from the website below the photo(s) (the XXXX in _MG_XXXX) and I’ll try to respond to as many as time allows.

You can also use that email address if you’d like a Black & White print, a different crop for a photo, a canvas print, or a larger size than what’s already listed on the website ordering form.

Questions or Comments?

If you had any other general questions or comments, please feel free to use the comment section below, or on my Facebook page.

If you’d prefer to contact me directly instead, you can email me at info@krisnelsonphoto.com or send a private message at my Facebook page there, as well.

Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy your photos!

– Kris

One happy baby enjoying his first day out in a snow covered, winter wonderland.

Back Story

After an unplanned “mental health” break last weekend, I was back behind the camera this past Saturday as the ‘ohana ventured out into the snow for our first winter snow portrait session.

And with the nearly unprecedented lack of snow so far this winter here in Chicago, it’s been a long wait to get out there do a shoot like this. While we were only shooting for 15 minutes, we had a blast and there were a ton of images to go through and edit afterwards.

All told, it was a great time that I can’t wait to do again. However, less than 72 hours after we were blessed with all this snow, the temps jumped above 40, the rains came and washed it all away – literally overnight. Bummer.

Guess it’s time to stalk the 10-day forecast again.

52 to Two Project

The above photo and the two below were also included as part of my weekly 52 to Two project.

Half Snow Angel

In the Bushes

Photo Shoot Photos

In addition to the photos added to the 52 to Two project, you can also see the rest of the images from this shoot in the Winter Snow Portraits gallery.

Here’s to wishing for the next big snowstorm and coming up with ideas for this week’s photo shoot as well.

– Kris

Outdoor portrait on a relatively warm January afternoon.

Back Story

Back with another installment in my weekly 52 to Two project. And for being the 2nd week in January already in Chicago, there may be a post from me soon titled “Where’s the Snow?” But that’s for another time.

This past weekend’s shoot was outdoors with natural light, thanks to some unseasonably warm “winter” weather. We started at about 4:45pm – which was a little bit before sunset – and shot for almost 30 minutes. The light was still a little harsh in the beginning because there were practically no clouds, but once the sun went down behind the buildings behind us, the light was gorgeous (but changing rapidly).

We were out in an open field, so I took another chance to shoot with my 70-200mm f/2.8L again with all that extra room to work with. The shoot actually worked somewhat similarly to some of the shoots we took in Door County back in October, which was nice. I originally had hoped to continue on with the walking theme from last week, but by the time the light was perfect, he was already getting tired.

A few of the other images from this shoot can be found over at my Facebook page in the Photo Shoots – 2012 album.

Here are the other two images that made it into the 52 to Two image galley this week.

Playing in the Grass.

Beautiful Light

View all the photos to-date in the 52 to Two project galley.

Future Shoot

While this field is literally minutes from our front door, it was the first time we did a shoot out there. The only thing that was missing – especially this time of year – was the snow. You can bet that as I continue to monitor the extended forecast, we’ll be back out to the same place at least once to get some wintry goodness.

Until then,
– Kris

A small beach with no name between the airport and the ocean.

Update: One of my Facebook readers kindly identified this as Kanaha Beach Park – Mahalo!

Back Story

2011 was a great year for my photography in so many ways, I probably should have done a “best of” post before it was over. Instead, I spent some time going back through my collections in Lightroom and ended up looking at a fair amount of shots from my doors-off helicopter shoot back in August during the Maui Photo Festival.

So, after a little time here and there this past weekend, I finished processing a handful of new images that I wanted to share here at the blog and elsewhere:

After Takeoff

North Shore Sands

Ka’anapali Beach

Maui Windmills

More Images

If you’d like to see more images from this photo shoot, visit the Maui Doors-Off Helicopter ’11 gallery in the Photo Shoots section.

You can also find more of my other aerial imagery in my Aerial Portfolio.

Last, but not least, you can also buy prints of these images and others in the Above Maui print gallery at my online store.

As always, I hope you enjoy the images and the beauty of Maui, and many thanks for the support.

– Kris

Taking a short break from walking through the hallway in our building.

Back Story

In addition to being the start of the new year, Sunday was also the latest edition in my 52 to Two project.

And it wasn’t much longer after last week’s photo shoot was over before I already knew what I wanted to shoot this week – our son’s new found skill of walking all on his own.

So after a week of watching him run circles around our condo, it was clear we didn’t have enough room to do a shoot for his walking talents. It would have been great to chase him around a park somewhere, but it was the middle of winter – that wasn’t going to happen. The hallway outside our unit was the best compromise we could come up with.

It was great having the extra room to use my 70-200mm f/2.8L lens again, and it turns out that extra stop of light was very necessary. The light in our hallway wasn’t as bright as I had thought it would be, so these shots were taken at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 using only the available light on the walls and ceiling.

The One That Got Away

I went to bed Saturday night envisioning a way to capture our son’s triumph over gravity in motion by deciding to shoot a composite of frames with him in full stride.

In order to go wider, I switched back to my 24-105mm f/4L lens, so I was already losing a stop of light there. Next, I had to dial down the aperture further in order of widen the depth of field, which brought me to f/10. To compensate for that, I maxed out the ISO at 6400, and well, the final result fell short of my expectations:

Outtake Image

I still like the concept, and am contemplating re-shooting this piece before walking becomes second nature to him. In order to pull it off, however, I imagine one or two continuous lights would be needed and that’s not in the budget this early in the year.

But we’ll see how creative I can be in the weeks ahead.

A brief look at some of the great eBooks found in the Craft & Vision iPad app.

It was a series of a few events that led me to discover the Craft & Vision iPad App.

The first was joining 500px and seeing a lot of great black and white portraits posted there. That, in turn, was followed by playing around with the Snapseed iPad App and working with the black and white editor it features.

But that only went so far. It was this holiday dPS deal that featured the eBooks from Craft & Vision that led me to try out the app.

In their extensive collection of eBooks, the first two I gravitated towards – while on a new black and white kick – was “The Magic of Black and White” series (parts I and II).

The App

Although the eBooks on the C&V website are available as PDFs – which means you can read them anywhere – I decided to try out the iPad app anyway since that’s ultimately where I’d be reading these. I’ve been reading PDFs in iBooks and have purchased a few Kindle books for the iPad this past year, so I’ve grown rather fond of carrying my library with me and reading titles anywhere.

The App itself is free, and it lets you browse through the catalog and just purchase the books you like within the App itself. It has it’s own built-in reader – so yes, that’s a third place I know have books on my iPad – but I like the fact that the entire catalog is right there and I’m not searching or browsing through the iBookstore or the Kindle Store whenever something comes to mind.

Each book that I’ve looked at so far is nicely illustrated with striking photos and is very well written. I do miss having a bookmark feature in the App’s reader, but I’m sure that can be added in a future update. These books aren’t terribly long and are typically fast reads, so it’s not a deal breaker for me so far.

Magic of Black and White

Getting back to the two books I’ve purchased through the App in The Magic of Black and White series. In only a day or two reading through them and looking back into my own existing image library, I was inspired to choose a few that already fit the criteria that the books’ author was describing. I still need a little practice, but here are the early results:

Resting

Airplane

And there is always this image I created last year when our son was first born that still stands as my favorite black and white image that I’ve created to date.

Baby Blanket

Of course, these were from photos that I had already taken and not shot with the end black and white result in mind. However, now that I’ve gotten a little thirsty for shots like these, I’m sure one of my upcoming 52 to Two project shoots will focus on shooting a few scenes with a black and white vision.

Your Thoughts?

Have you tried the Craft & Vision app or read any of their eBooks? What’s your take compared to some of the other eBooks or authors you’ve read? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.