Woods

Family First

When fall arrives, the families show up for shoots!

While I’m not really doing the whole family portrait thing much anymore, I did take on a few. Scott & Lynn booked me back in the winter months for a family session as a gift for their family but didn’t want to do the shoot until summer. Due to work and weather, this summer shoot quickly turned into a fall shoot.. where does the time go?

Roth park is a go to for me, well in Woodstock, It’s a go to for every photographer here as it offers a lot.. lake and beautiful woodsy trails, a bit of a beach at the right time of year. We knew what we were looking for on this shoot and the woods were perfect for it. It was starting to get chilly out so I didn’t want to keep everyone out to long, 40 mins was the goal, which was achieved.

Cassidy, Ben & LUCA!

    Luca turned 1 ! ... unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the little man's birthday, so we decided to do a family portrait session. 

    6pm, the sun was out and getting lower in the sky, it was nice and warm with a small breeze.. perfect conditions to get out and shoot. If you follow my work you've seen Cassidy many times through out my portfolio, she has been a HUGE help to me and my photography. You may have even seen her Maternity photos.. in fact, I KNOW you have seen at least one of those images because it's the first image to see when you come to my website. Well little Luca is here! .. he's actually been here for a year, as he just had his birthday, so we wanted to get together and photograph them as a family.  Our session started at Cassidy and Ben's home in London Ontario as they have a big backyard that always has some nice light. Luca had just woken up from his nap and he is teething so he was a little unhappy at the start, which is a bit unusual for him because he's always so happy, but who wouldn't be upset when you have big bits of calcium busting through your gums?!

    Our photographic adventure took us to a part of Western University, where there are some trails and a forest with a river, which always makes for great light and over all amazing images. Hiking through the forest as the sun dropped the light was glowing from everywhere, and in a field not far from the path we were on there was a herd of dear grazing in the shade. With their small velvet antlers looking all innocent and cute, we immediately dropped everything (accept the camera's of course), and started to shoot with the deer in the background.
    Getting deeper into the woods we reached a point where the path drops down into a gully, surrounded by tall trees and this amazing orange/yellowish light beaming in from in front of us. There was a small patch of light with this green moss growing in the light, and I knew we had to put Luca down in this light and get a shot. 
    From here we made it down to the river where we had some shots of Cassidy feeding Luca and Cassidy, Luca and Ben all sitting on the edge of the water in some tall grass cuddled up with one another. I had Cassidy take Luca out into the shallow parts of the water (ankle deep) so we could get some nice shots of them in the river with the amazing filtered light shining down on them. 

Over all this was a fantastic shoot, great way to spend the day/evening and make some phenomenal imagery for some amazing people! 

-Shutter Click!
 
 

Family Fall Forest Fun!

The leaves were falling, trees looking pretty bare, the sun was out and beaming through the trees and there was a cool breeze making the air crisp as we ventured through the woods out towards the pond. Ashley, her daughter Pyper and I have known each other for years.. we're bestfriends and I'm sure you've all seen them in many of my images. These two I couldn't imagine my life without. There's a strapping young lad amongst these images who goes by the name of Kyle, and he is Ashley's fiance who I am growing fond of and get along with awesomely.. he gave me corn the first time I met him and after this shoot he supplied me with a big bag of Butternut squash.. how could I not like him? 

Every year we get together and set up a shoot or two so they always have pictures to see how far they've come and document Pypers growth, which I love. Every time we head out to shoot we always have a blast, Pyper is a dream to photograph always just being a kid and saying " Kevin, take my picture here... now over here.. can I take a picture with your camera? " as she holds down the shutter button and fires off 50 frames of blur lol, love this kid! 

Kyles parents have a huge amount of land with tons of forest and a big pond all of which we decided to use for this shoot. It was a bit chilly out and windy so we didn't spend to much time out there, but shot as much as we could before we were to cold. Next summer we will be going back and doing some fun creative stuff out on the lake with the canoe and a fog machine.. so make sure you keep checking back for those. 

Over all, we had a great time, made some great images and I can't wait to do it again!  

Wish them Bon Voyage as they take off to Florida to experience Disney Land! 

Mom and Daughter Fashion shoot

You will see a lot of these two from me, they are my best friends and we're always doing shoots together. It's Labour Day weekend, it's still summer and warm out, so there's still time for some outdoor photoshoots. We had talked about doing a shoot but weren't to sure if the weather was going to cooperate, but we were hanging out anyways so we played it by ear. The weather actually ended up working perfectly, it was too hot for the most part, especially when we went down to the trails in the woods. 

We started off in the backyard, there's a neat little shed back there that kind of has a rustic look to it which I felt would be neat for a background. I put a flash on a stand up in amongst a tree hoping to have some of the leaves and branches cast shadows down onto the shed for a little more drama in the scene, plus I love shadows. 
    From there I told them about a place I know of where there's all these trails down through the woods and a big lake, which I thought would make for some good images, I've shot down there quite a bit. We walked a few of the trails but didn't go to far, the sun was out in full effect and with these trails being incased by trees there was zero air flow, so it was getting quite hot and muggy and the mosquito's were treating us like a buffet. 

for these images I was just using one flash, up high on a stand, no umbrella or soft box, just hard light, which is weird for me because I hate hard light. To carry a soft box, stand and flash plus the camera down there, for an impromptu photoshoot was to much so I decided to restrict myself and see what we could come up with. Over all the shoot went pretty well, I'm still not that good at mixing flash with ambient light, I get the concept it just isn't something I've done a lot. For the most part, i've been an ambient light shooter, only in the last 1.5 years have I been tackling flash, so I'm happy with the images and so were the clients. Here's to a great day with two people I love more than life, a good shoot, and summer. I'm going to miss these summer days/nights, but it's the price you pay for living in Canada!

Images below 

    - Shutter Click. 

 

These trails were a little dark and kind of creepy, so we decided to have some fun with it and do some hard lighting to give that dark, moody, shadow feel to the image. 

She was getting a little tired of shooting and wanted to do more cuddling, so, roll with the punches and use whats presented to you.. 

using a flash far back shooting through the trees, I was able to cast some shadows down onto the shed to give that " late in the day, hard light " vibe. 

These were some of our fav pics from the shoot. Out in the woods with a tunnel of trees, the light was nice as it filtered down through all the leaves. 

A another image of pyper running into her moms arms after she was getting tired of walking and just wanting to go home. 

Pyper didn't want to do pictures anymore, she was getting tired. As the wind blew, she decided to walk off set. Sometimes the best images are the unplanned, quick shot images. 

Shoots can be tiring for little ones, especially on hot summer days. Always wait for that moment when a child decides walking is overrated and wants to be carried. Once the parent picks them up, you can get some good candid, real moment shots. 

These trails can get pretty dark and seem a little creepy. Pyper thought there were packs of wolves in the forest and kept yelling out "pack of wolves". We decided to use this to our advantage and do a creepy, dark woods image using hard light to cast shadows amongst the trees.