Honesty

If there's one thing I never get tired of, it's photographing my nieces.  They are by far my favorite subjects.  They're very expressive- some of the looks they come up with have me wondering why they aren't Baby GAP models!

I like working with them for a lot of reasons.  A teacher I had once told me the worst compliment you can get on a photograph of a child is that it's 'cute'.  Well, of course it's cute- babies are hard-pressed to be anything else (frustrating, yes, but ugly?  That takes finesse).  To get a photograph of a baby being something more than 'cute' is the real challenge.  Alyssa has such intensely blue eyes and such a dramatic personality, I am constantly running for my camera when I'm with her.

I want to get the shot that tells a story.  I know there are twenty other people in the room with point-and-shoot cameras who will get the 'cute' shot, and that's important.  Everyone wants cute pictures from their childhood.  And certainly I take those, as well.  But my favorites are the ones where there's something more.  Something deeper.  Emotions they probably don't even fully understand yet.

I guess, I want to try to capture all aspects of reality.  The happy and the sad.  The hopeful and the forlorn.  Everything we feel, from birth to death.  Maybe that's the photojournalist in me?  I just... want to show things the way they really are.  No crazy set-up, no contrived facade, just... people captured honestly.

Making do.

Today is the family reunion, and it's raining.  Well, if I've gotten good at anything, I'd like to think it's making do with what I've got.  I almost never use professional lighting- I depend largely on sunlight and what's available in my settings.  The photo I took here was in a poorly lit bedroom with sea-green walls and piles of clothes.

When I'm not having fun with my digital-manipulations, I do try to avoid excess altering.  I don't mean lighting and color- I fiddle with those a lot, but I almost never add or remove objects from the original shot.

With this one, obviously I did a lot of work.  I took out the piles of clothes and shelves to her right, I changed the color of the wall and a few other little things.

I doubt I'll be doing all that with the pictures I take today- probably just color correction.  We'll see how it goes.