Day 300; Sunrise on the River

Today, I present this gem from last October. On this particular morning, a club I'm a member of was putting on a rabbit show, which meant getting up well before the sun did. The show location had a great view of the river, so when the sun did start coming up I slipped away to get this shot. There are many things I like about this image. I love the colors present, with the purples and blues of the water and the pinks and yellows in the sky. The water has a gorgeous texture and I love how it's juxtaposed with the pattern of the fence. The fence forms a leading line which effectively leads the eye from the highlight on the water to the child's silhouette on the right side. The presense of the silhouette adds an interesting secondary focal point and a significant amount of interest to the image. The negative space of the trees on the horizon, the fence, and the silhouette provide a nice balance with the busyness of the water.

Day 276; Time Flies

It's been a very long time since my last post and I am incredibly sorry. A lot of things have been going on and I simply have not gotten around to it. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, because I know I sure did. This weekend it's been relatively warm, which has been great. It's made me wish summer were back though, so I dug out this old photo from the summer of 2012. My little brother Noah is holding a baby rabbit and was pretty happy about it. I didn't do too much editing to this back then, except for a scratch on his right eyebrow which I had decided to airbrush out. Now, it looks clumsy and kind of obvious, but back then I didn't know any better. I do love the natural lighting going on here.

Day 268; Elijah's Eyes

This photo is fairly simple. It's a portrait of my brother Elijah. It turned out pretty interesting, as it focused on his nose and left his eyes out of focus. I liked the black and white to draw the attention to the lighting pattern and smaller details.

Day 258; Looking Lens

My brother Elijah agreed to pose for me today. Granted, it took a little bribery. Either way, I got some really neat portraits but this was my favorite. I liked how the eyes were really the focus of the image and how he used his hands to frame his face, adding interest. I thought a black and white effect was best for the simplicity of the photo as it drew more attention to the various details of his face.

Day 232; Noah and his Bunny

My brother Noah likes to come out to the barn with me each day to play with the baby rabbits. This little black Dutch in particular has been a favorite recently. A couple mornings ago I had Noah sit on this pile of boards so I could take a picture of him with his bunny. He still squints his eyes when I ask him to smile, but I still love this photo. I especially liked the texture the boards provided in conjunction with the stripes on his shirt. To highlight the the details of the image I used a black and white effect.

Day 223; Elijah at Easter

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I know my siblings and I did. Today's photos are of Elijah at our family Easter get-together yesterday. He was waiting patiently for the Easter egg hunt to start, and didn't know I was photographing him. Considering how far away I was, I was surprised these photos turned out, but I was glad they did.

Day 220; Elijah in the Dark

Tonight's photo is a portrait of my brother Elijah. When taking it the goal was to get a photo like the one of Noah I posted a while ago (found here), but it ended up going in a whole other direction. Elijah's darker hair, eyes, and skin made the faded look I used on Noah impossible and I couldn't get the lighting quite right. Plus, he couldn't pull off the serious, stare-into-your-soul look I captured on Noah.   While editing I toyed around with several possibilities, but I settled on this very dramatic black and white look.

Day 215; Noah in the Dark

I love portraits. I love the diversity and the complexity of people, and how we, as photographers, can capture a sliver of a person's personality and it will be there forever. I didn't set out today with the goal of taking a portrait, but when my little brother Noah was willing to participate I couldn't resist. Since it was totally dark outside I had the idea to turn out the overhead light in my room and use a small portable light to illuminate his face. The result was a very dramatic lighting pattern with deep shadows on either side and creeping onto the left side of his face (his left, it's the right side when you're looking at it). Luckily he was wearing a dark shirt so it worked out surprisingly well. Now that I'm looking at the finished product, the serious expression on his face makes him look much older than his three years. To get the really dramatic look I wanted I faded a black and white effect to give the colors in his face a little bit of a washed out look so the bright colors of his eyes and hair didn't stand out too much.

Day 209; Standing on the Haybale

Last Friday I posted a photo of my brother Noah's shadow on the side of a round haybale. Today, to continue the theme, is a picture of my brother Elijah standing on the same bale. I had him try several different positions, some showing the bale and some without. I ended up liking this one since it gave the impression that he was flying or on top of the world. Since the sky behind him was so bright and the sunset only eliminated him so much, most of his body and face are quite dark. To compensate for this and lend an older vintage look, I layered a green cross-process, a dusk effect, and a spotlight effect to get a more unique and unusual photo.

Day 208; Shadow on the Haybale

This afternoon we went to my grandpa's house for dinner. He raises cattle and always has haybales sitting around someplace. Today that place happened to be in front of the barn where the setting sun could light it up. I wanted my brother Noah, who happened to be wearing his farmer shirt, to stand in front for it for some portraits but he wasn't cooperating. While he stood next to me trying to get me to come play soccer, I snapped a couple photos of our shadows. The only editing I did was to highlight the shadows by adding vignetting around the edges.

Day 194

Sorry I haven't posted in the past couple days, but the whole family has been super sick. I finally seem to have started getting better, or at least I'm well enough to work on photography. I had my brother Elijah with me, and we went outside to get a few portraits. I'm not sure exactly what this pose is all about, but when I'm working with Elijah I usually just let him stand or sit however he wants to. In this case, he opted for a sort of squatting position with his arms folded across his body. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the color red. But that's what color Elijah was wearing and I actually really liked it against the bright white snow. I added some vignetting around the edges to give a kind of ultra modern look to the portrait.

Day 186

Today was my little brother's birthday. He was ecstatic about the farm animal set our grandma sent him, and he played with it on the floor almost all day. In fact, I could barely get him to look at me to get any pictures of him smiling. Since I couldn't get him to work with me, I took some pictures while he was playing, and got some interesting angles. I applied the Dusk effect from picmonkey.com to give an older look to the portrait.

Day 155

We got the first snow of the season yesterday, and this morning we had a big frost. I got one of my brothers to pose for me to take advantage of the morning light. The light is a little harsh on the side of his face nearest the sun, but I love dramatic light on his face. To downplay the highlights a little I added slight dark edges. (click photo to enlarge)

Day 154

Is he adorable or what? His older brother taught him to crinkle and almost close his eyes when he smiles for pictures, something that I'm not very grateful for. But it worked out in this one, and I loved the rock background with the leaves strewn here and there.

Day 146

Tonight I'm in a hotel on the way to the 2013 American Rabbit Breeders Association National Convention. My little brother Nehemiah is sitting on the floor right now drawing in a notebook that I think will be full by the time we get home. To edit I applied black and white with a slight dark edge.

Day 129

This morning my little brother Elijah was outside playing while the other kids were feeding our animals. I was photographing this field where my grandpa had mown down some foxtails when Elijah ran up. I decided to stage an impromptu portrait shot using the dead grass as our backdrop.  To edit I added a slight Dusk effect to give some warmth to the colors, and then added a softened effect to the background to decrease attention to the details of the grass and make his face stand out more. I then rounded the corners because the oval shape helped make the textured grass background less overwhelming.

Day 127

Today's photo is a portrait of two of my favorite subjects; my brother Noah and my horse Thalia. Noah was so cute because he would try to feed her out of his hand, but would drop the grass and run as soon as she moved her head up to eat it. In this shot I had finally convinced him that Thalia knew the difference between carrots and fingers.

Day 109

I've been super busy getting ready for fair, so I haven't posted much. But today I decided I would share this photo I took of my little brother yesterday when he was trying on a suit he was taking to the fair as a clothing project. He was really an excellent model and did exactly what I told him to. I made the photo black and white because the green shirt he was wearing blended in with the green foliage in the background. I then added dark edges to give it a finished professional look.

Day 107

Yesterday morning my little brother got out his favorite baby bunny to hold while my mom and I checked the other rabbits. It was so cute how the bunny just sat there while Noah carried him around everywhere that I couldn't resist taking a bunch of pictures. I'm not sure why Noah is sticking his tongue out like that, I assumed it had something to do with repositioning his rabbit at the moment this shot was taken. Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

Day 103

I love this photo. I took it on Saturday when I took my little brother Noah down to the pig pen. On the way back he noticed a bird perched in a tree, and that is what he was looking at and smiling about. Thankfully I had my camera with me, so I snapped a few shots of him before he noticed. Since he's so short it looks like he's in a jungle, and I wish that one piece of grass in front of his face was not there. But other than that, I think it turned out well. I used the Dusk effect from picmonkey.com.

I also wanted to let you know that I won't be posting again for a while, since I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a youth conference.