In a valiant effort to get out during the daylight hours and get some new photos, my lovely girlfriend offered to accompany me through Seattle’s arboretum. It’s basically Seattle’s version of Central Park. There are paths throughout, and it truly shows the seasons. With daylight savings time arriving this past weekend, there wasn’t as much daylight as we might have liked, but in the couple hours we spent there I think we were able to get quite a few solid photos.
We first met at her sister’s wedding, where I was the hired photographer. From that event, I can recall walking around (as photographers do) and trying to snap a photo of her laughing and/or being goofy. The reception ended that night, and when I reviewed my shots from the evening some of my favorite photos were those in which she was laughing or being animated (as she is known to be at times). I’m very pleased that several of these photos captured that same side of her.
The above shot was something I took, knowing full well it would be selected for a few local blogs and It was. I really wanted the colors of the leaves to come through while also keeping the feel of the shot authentic and warm.
I just like this one. No artistic reasons…. just do.
This was an experiment. She’d flip her hair back and forth or up and down. I’d set my shutter speed to a fairly quick setting and snap a series of shots. Then it was simply a matter of adding a zoom layer mask and painting back in the subject. I left some of her flipped hair with the zoom effect in order to keep the subject and the backdrop looking like they came from the same shot (as they actually did).
I very much love this shot. I look at this and think about how when we get older, we have a few portraits of us in our youth that we point to and remember how good we looked/happy we were/etc. I believe this has the potential to be one of those portraits for Heather. I also like the bokeh on the right side of the image.
This shot was a random, spur of the moment idea. I had originally thought of shooting this at the base of a tree, with her laying on the ground. However, it had rained a great deal the day before, and having her lay on wet moss/leaves didn’t seem like a fair request. Thankfully, a nearby park bench provided a dry location for a similar shot.
This was a more straight forward version of the “hair flip experiment.” A friend of mine said “If Heather releases a record any time soon, this would be the cover.” Personally, I think we could come up with something a little more creative. After putting it through my signature styling process, it reminded me of the Spiegel catalogues my mom used to collect and keep in the downstairs restroom. Strange association, I know. Either way, I liked the photo.
This next shot was one of the three big experiments of the shoot (for those counting along at home, I plan to show the third at a later date, since it tests the limits of my current Photoshop knowledge). To create this shot, I fixed my camera in a single location, and had Heather pose in several different locations within the frame. I was careful to prevent her from posing in a position that would overlap too much with the previous ones. Then I placed each photo in to a single Photoshop file as layers. I created layer masks for all but one and painted each shot of her in to the original background image. My goal was to make this look like a single shot; meaning that I maintained a single focus area throughout. This is why the Heather standing on the right is less in focus than the one standing on the table. Also I wanted to make sure the shadows of her on the table were her actual shadows (and not recreated). The result is one I’m okay with. I will likely try this again at some point.
-Elldub
