Bracketing for a family photo shoot and how to find the perfect light.

Lomo CN400, Olympus Om1 

Bracketing means if I go into a shoot think my ideal settings will be 1/60 second and 4f, I will shoot every picture one or two stops under and over exposed. This would ensure a good shot nearly every time. However, it also means not every shot on my roll will be good. 

 

 

In a family session, things move at a quick pace. At this point in my photo "career" I most likely exposed using my cameras internal light meter, which means I failed to account for the shadows, leaving a good amount of my pictures just slightly underexposed. The pictures came out well, but I would only consider the ones exposed well "frame worthy".

 

 

Bracketing works great when you want a few really good shots but aren't too worried about a consistent look for the whole roll. 

This photo is my favorite shot of the whole session. It is lighted properly and composed well. The subjects show just a slight blur indicating that they are in movement and their expressions are happy, comfortable, and they aren't in any awkward positions.

Things get awesome when you find the perfect light while bracketing. Most film can handle a bit of overexposure. The following four frames were just that. This was unintentional at the time, but looking back, afterward, I am able to see what light elements are ideal. 

 

 

A note about my "look". 

I'm starting to notice a repetition of things I absolutely love about my photos.  I like to use blur. In the beginning of my learning film, blur was unintentional but I always seemed to like it when it showed up. In today's world of digital photography, crisp clear images are everywhere. The last picture above shows the couple kissing. The background is clear and the couple is blurred. Kissing is a private and intimate thing. What I love about the photo is how the composition and lighting forces you to look at the kissing couple but the blur distorts the action keeping it veiled. It allows for viewing the scene without feeling as if you are there. This is just one way I would like to intentionally use blur in my photos.

Another aspect of the photos I love is that people are shown as they are; happy, natural, and most definitely not photoshopped.  A lot of people (mostly women) will say they don't like this or that about their body. They hope a photographer can take pictures that look like their ideal self and not pictures of what they really look like. In my opinion, very rarely is someone truly ugly. We may have flaws, but flaws remind us that we are human, we are real. I want pictures to represent real people. When you get your photos taken, I want your family, your kids, your grandkids to remember who you really are and be proud.

This is probably one of my favorite photo sessions. In the words of Andreas Feininger (Photographic Seeing; 1973):

An "amateur" is somebody who does something because he loves to do it, the word amateur coming from the Latin amator, which means "lover," and amare, which means "to love." Let's always keep this in mind because it contains one of the keys to success: unless you love what you are doing, you will never become really good at it. 

During that time I was truly an amateur in photography. Every roll of film, I shot because I loved to. This family in particular was good friends with ours, while living in Korea. These photos are mere representations of the love they had for one another and it was always a joy to be in their presence.