The inbox and calendar are starting to fill up with Senior Portrait requests. I am local to Lakewood High School, Green Mountain High School, Alameda High School and Bear Valley High School. Yearbook headshot deadlines will be upon you faster than you know it (indeed, I can’t believe school starts in roughly 4 weeks), so get your photoshoot scheduled today. We can do urban or mountain. Favorite locations include Red Rocks and spots along Bear Creek toward Kittredge. Rocky Mountain National Park is an option too, but additional fees would apply for travel time.

I think it hit 70°F yesterday here in Lakewood, Colorado. While February and March are the snowiest months in Colorado, spring is right around the corner. And with that comes the time to start thinking about Senior Pictures for the class of 2010. If you like the work I have done, contact me today so we can start thinking about when and where we can get a start on the pictures for your Senior. If you haven’t seen my work yet, take a look at my portrait portfolio. My rates are reasonable, and I will make sure you are happy with the end result.

A friend of mine recently had an impromptu family reunion photo shoot come up. Her background, like mine, is traditionally more of an artistic type of photography. She indicated that she had trouble switching to photographer from artist and wanted to know how I managed it.

I was a bit taken aback by this, as I don’t really see myself as being good at the portrait thing (although people are loving Megan’s senior pics - the photo above is one of them). But that isn’t very helpful to anyone, so I thought about it and gave her my gut reaction. I have since thought about it more, and my gut reaction is the same, so here it is.

The focus of a portrait should be the person/ people/ animal that the portrait is supposed to be of. This might sound obvious, but it isn’t always that way, especially in post processing. It is easy for creative people to start saying “what if I cropped here, what if I applied sepia there?” and pretty much forget about what it is they are there to do. When I was doing the processing of the Senior Pictures for my daughter Megan, I had to look at it from my view as a parent. I want a tasteful image that reflects who she is, and where she is the focus.

Another reality with portraits is that people are going to be less likely to have any custom framing done. As such, any cropping you do should have a resultant image in a standard “frameable” size. Not to say some people won’t do the custom thing, but since portraits get sent to a larger audience (parents, grandparents, etc.), it is more helpful if you can keep it standard.

One of the cool things I love about Adobe Lightroom is the easy ability to create and work with virtual copies of an image. This is great for portraits. If I see a shot that might look better with a certain crop, displayed in black and white or sepia, or any other artistic variation, I can apply it to the copy, and upload that with the original and let the buyer choose which they like better. These people are the art directors, not you, and you need to give them all the options. Some might sell, some might not, but at least they will know the options. And if they like it, they will buy it from you instead of trying to do it themselves with whatever photo site they like.

I do still think there is room for being artistic in a portrait situation. I think the example above highlights one such opportunity. As Megan was climbing out into the stream, I saw this shot in my mind. So I stayed put on the banks of the stream and took this shot from further out. Then I clambered into the stream and did the up-close shots before we called it a day.

So in a nutshell, I guess the answer to my friend’s question is “don’t forget that it is about the people and what they want, not necessarily your vision.” But if you offer options, you are that much more ahead of the game.

All in all I have taken somewhere around 200 pictures of Megan in the last couple of months. We did it mostly in 2 location, Golden Gate Canyon State Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Of those photos, Megan and my wife narrowed it down to 24 that they really liked. Using the guidelines set forth by the Lakewood High School yearbook staff, I narrowed the field down to 6 images I thought would be suitable for a headshot for the yearbook. I then exported these 6 from Lightroom 2 into their own slideshow online (the first time I had used this feature, and it worked pretty well).

Of the 6, the image above is the one she wants to use in the yearbook. After adjusting some of the lighting levels in Lightroom, I took it into Photoshop to apply some effects with Portraiture. The end result is pretty good, and I am sure will look great when printed at 2″ x 2″, or whatever yearbooks are printing at these days.

In the coming months we will be taking more photos. Why? Well, since the bulk of Senior Pictures are sent out in the spring with graduation announcements, party invitations and so forth, we have some time yet to get more pictures in more surroundings at different times of the year. Besides, she is going off to college next year. As her parents, we can never have enough pictures when she is out on her own.

A few months ago I took some photos of a very corporate restroom, thinking (for some crazy reason) that they might make good stock photos. I put them up on iStockphoto and pretty much forgot about them. In fact , over the last several weeks, I pretty much forgot about stock photography altogether. I have been travelling for work, trying to figure out how I want to do the real estate photography thing, taking senior pictures of my daughter, taking pictures of the Lakewood High School cheerleaders, and still trying to have a family life. Yep, pretty busy, just like you.

Then I came across a blog post about fotoLibra. I checked it out. I liked what I saw. I made some uploads and then wrote about it briefly yesterday. And in that writing, I made a mistake.

I said I hadn’t made any money off of my stock photo endeavors so far. After I wrote that, I checked in at iStockphoto (haven’t done that for a very long time). Sure enough, I have had some sales. 3 to be exact, garnering me total commissions of $3.92. For the bathroom photos. That’s right - the bathroom photos. Not the pretty picture of golf carts all lined up in the morning, not the pretty cactus or the corporate biz jet. The bathrooms.

It’s kind of funny really. Some friends of mine thought I was crazy taking a photo of a bathroom, much less a few of them. But you never really know what people want (which is why I like fotoLibra), but apparently I must have at least a little bit of an eye for it. To the tune of almost $4 right now. Woohoo. I might go buy a Chai at Starbucks. That’s only enough to pay for a small though.

Hopefully this is the start of something wonderful. Hopefully fotoLibra is more successful. I really want them to succeed. But as long as my photos are selling somewhere, I guess I am happy.

I have been reading more than a few books on the subject of photography lately. Also been hanging around some interesting conversations that have made me think (never a bad thing). Some of what I am seeing and hearing is this: specialize so that you will be known in that area. Presumably this would be true also because it would allow you to hone your skills in that area.

But I like to be different. And the last thing I like is to be pigeon-holed.

My photographic interests have evolved over the years. My current “collection” of interests is as eclectic as my taste in music. For me it is more a matter of inspiration than anything else. If I feel inspired, I’ll take a picture of whatever it is that made me feel that way. Could be a padlock, a surfer walking on a beach, a solitary cactus, or my family. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It just happens, and I hope I was smart enough to bring my camera.

Sure, it could be that I don’t make the absolute best image for that “category”, but if it is pleasing to me, isn’t that enough? Some people I know are too kind and tell me that I have “the eye” for certain types of photography, and ask why I don’t do it full time. The answers are fairly simple.

1. I have a day job that I really enjoy
2. I make a good living at said day job
3. I have turned a hobby into a profession before, and I started to burn out

So instead I choose to keep this low-key, taking pictures at events I am part of, doing our family portrait or pics of the kids, and basically keep this fun. Does this mean that I can’t try to sell my photos? Of course not.

I can make this fun, and maybe make some side money from it too. More importantly, I have the freedom to expand my horizons. I love landscapes and flower macros and think I do well with them. I don’t do well with people (I am a computer geek after all), so that is what I want to work on next. But I can also take a time out and have fun making a stock photo when conditions warrant. I can be whoever I want, because I don’t have responsibilities around it, nor the trappings that come with that responsibility. If some images sell along the way, that’s great. But if I enjoy the pictures I take, then that is all I need. Just don’t tell me who I should be. My portfolio will tell you who I am.

As we were driving into the Bear/ Sprague Lake area on Sunday, we drove alongside Mill Creek and I noticed that it had a significantly-sized channel with a lot of boulders in it. I filed it away in the back of my mind, thinking it warranted more inspection. I think Megan noticed it too.

After we wrapped up with all the shooting at Bear Lake and Sprague Lake, we started to head out of the park. It had rained pretty good, and the roads were pretty wet. As we crossed the bridge over Mill Creek, Megan and I agreed that we should at least check the site out. I was a bit concerned because of how much it had rained. The rocks looked pretty slick. We walked all the way from where we parked down to the bridge (where I took a photo of the underside of the bridge because of George Barr and his book. I still had reservations because of the wetness of the rock, but Megan wanted to do it and was confident she could if she went barefoot.

Throwing caution to the wind, we went out into the boulder field/ creek. I wouldn’t want to try this in May/ June when the runoff is raging through there, but at this time of the year the creek was pretty tame. I found what I thought was a good rock for Megan to pose on. I got a good number of shots of her on that rock. Some laughing, some serious, but all good I think. I decided to “think outside the box” a little and moved her off to one side of the frame. That resulted in the picture above. When she saw it in camera later, she was really excited. Didn’t catch what she thought of it full size on the screen. Guess I’ll have to dig into her myspace page - I am sure it is there if she liked it.

For me though, this image could be used to convey so many thoughts. I could easily see it being some type of album cover (or something along these lines at least), or an advertisement, or just an interpretive piece for the viewer to decide what it means. For some reason this image is very powerful to me. Maybe I am reading more into it since I took the image. Definitely possible. Doesn’t matter though, I really like it.