Lifestyle portraits in Düsseldorf, Kerstin & Josie

A few weeks ago my neighbour contacted me because she wanted a few portraits of her and her daughter taken. She wanted to make a photobook for her husband's birthday, which is today. She wanted something natural not too posed and a few close ups so we arranged to meet at the park close to our house.

A few days later the light was perfect and I called her to see if she had time. I like my pictures to convey the emotions of the subject. My idea was to let them play together and have fun. I wanted to capture the moments as they happened.

I needed them to relax and we started the session with some silly pictures, them jumping together, walking along the path... Josie even helped me to take some photos of her mother. After 10-15 minutes they were totally comfortable with the camera and I had already a couple of keepers. Then I was able to come closer and focus on the faces. Once the mandatory portraits were taken we just strolled around, they played, sat together on the grass... I just kept shooting directing them just minorly to make them look towards the light or move to a better background.

We had all a good time and enjoyed the shooting and they were as happy with the photos as I was. The father has seen them today when he got his present and loved them. A satisfied customer and a happy photographer.

Here are a few images from the shooting. Enjoy!

88 years

I love to take portraits, someone once even called me a good portraitist, but this one is one very special.

We were celebrating the 88th birthday of my grandpa and he was looking at me, so serene that I could only run and grab the camera to capture taht look. The light was perfect and I managed to take a couple of portraits focusing on his eyes. I had my new toy "Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS II" which allowed me to have a shallow depth of field and isolate them. How many things those eyes have seen and lived!!



As usual, click on the image to see it bigger.

Fire!

I haven't posted anything in quite a while, too long in fact, but it does not mean I have not been shooting. I have done quite a few interesting shootings lately and I hope to be able to post some soon. Meanwhile here are some pictures I took 2 weeks ago in Laredo at a medieval fest.

I have always been fascinated by fire it makes a great element to capture, creating amazing forms and colours. In this case there was the additional challenge of capturing the action which lasted no more than a couple of seconds each time. To make it even more difficult the amount of light changes drastically as the fire grows or diminishes.

I set the camera on Av, 8 frames per second burst mode and fired away. In the end I am quite happy with the results. They are not as spectacular as the one I managed last year (where the fire formed the shape of a horse) but still quite good.

I would not mind repeating this kind of shot again, so if you know somebody in the Düsseldorf region or surroundings it would be great to organize something.