White Winter / BMOB Portraits

As we wrap up the outdoor portrait season I wanted to share some images from last winter:



Lots of adorable kids...






...and families too...



Just about a year ago a Shul (synagogue) in the Teaneck Area of NJ approached me about taking pictures of all their members. Since taking everyone to the park was out of the question we obviously had to create a studio indoors. I had many ideas but opted to setup a seamless white backdrop. Portraits on white are timeless, allow for endless creative options and are also easy to maintain. Plus, the consistency of the lighting and positioning of the subjects on the backdrop makes for efficient portraits sessions, which is a must when you have close to a hundred families to shoot! Ironically, last year it pretty much snowed non-stop, so other than their outfits these pictures would have looked the same had they actually been taken outside!

Anyway, this is what the space looked like when I arrived for the first day of appointments:




This is the same space an hour later:




On the other side of the partitions I had a slideshow running on a monitor and some coloring books to keep the kids busy while they waited:





I hope to arrange several more indoor portrait days this coming cold season. If you are interested in having me come to your neighborhood please drop me a line.

Snow or Shine it's gonna be a White Winter!

Albums

For far too long I have not had any information about albums on my site. Without going into detail in this post I wanted to share a few pics of some of the albums I have done over the last few years.

Avraham After / Family Portraits

Here's a real quick follow up to yesterdays post. How handsome is he now?!




Great kid from a great family.

Avrahams Upsherin

It's probably about time we followed up with our little friend to see how his haircut went.





He's looking at those scissors the way I watch my dentist as he grabs the next tool.




Zaidy (Grandpa) gets to cut the first locks. Avraham is the youngest after three girls, look at the pride on his fathers face!




Who's next? Its Mom's turn, followed by his sisters.










Good job Bud, you were really brave. After the ceremony and the party he went for a proper haircut. Then it was time for some "After" portraits with the whole family, so check back soon...

Bar Mitzvah Monogram

This is a simple monogram that I created for a Bar Mitzvah that I will be shooting in a coupla weeks. The client didn't want anything fancy, just Tikun style type with a little extra flair.

Autumn Portraits in the Park

Well, the leaves certainly didn't waste any time this year. After an early snowstorm caught them off guard and brought down many of the trees in the area, it seemed like they decided to all fall at once. And with the City struggling to clean up the storm aftermath, the leaves became an afterthought. They fell & fell this fall and the kids had a blast running & rolling in the deep carpet of foliage.









I couldn't let their parents escape without a few quick shots of the whole family.



We really lucked out that day. After some nasty weather we had a bunch of mild days that were just perfect for Portraits in the Park.

Gurock Family Portrait

This past week I had the pleasure of taking a portrait of the entire Gurock Family. When I moved to Passaic over 18 years ago they were one of the first families that I met. Their oldest son and I were in high school together and we shared a carpool for a couple of years. Those were the days.
With kids living out of state it's not often that they are all together and, regrettably I am only in touch with them via Facebook (it's a new fad, you should check it out). But this past Thanksgiving weekend I was excited by the chance to photograph them together and the resulting image is above.

Often when I am asked to take family pictures the goal is to get a variety of shots of the family sitting, posing, playing and just being themselves. The images from those sessions may each be beautiful independently but make a compelling story when told together either in an album, as a collage or just a series of framed pictures next to each other - check out these family portraits from a couple of summers ago. The Gurock's on the other hand wanted a single great shot of the entire family; anything else I could get (and I did take other pictures) was icing on the cake.

So my assistant Aryeh and I spend a short while scouting the best location and posing each of the subjects in the picture. The real work however, came in post production. As you can imagine getting 16 people to all look good in the same shot is nearly impossible. So I set my camera on a tripod and took four shots, making minor adjustments to the posing while doing my best to keep everyone engaged and smiling at the camera (when dealing with little kids that usually involves me making a fool of myself). Below you can see the four pictures next to each other along with the printout I used to markup which faces and body positions I wanted to use for the final image




It's a little hard to see in the smaller version here, but trust me, the subtle differences in expression of each person can make or break the picture (but sometimes that can add to the character of the shot as well). Notice how the guy sitting on the right side of the picture is slouching in the first shot, while the tall guy standing in the middle has his hand in his pocket for all the other shots. Things like that don't always matter as much as the two examples below. The three shots of the boy and the three shots of the girl are both chronological. While she is perfect in the first picture he takes a few tries to get comfortable. Kids will be kids.




Anyway, as you might have guessed it's very time consuming. Unless your group shot has more than a handful of people in it and your know you intend to make a large copy (this shot on canvas with some brush strokes would be really sweet) it's not necessary to go though all this trouble. Your family is perfect just the way they are!