Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Conceptual Family Portraiture: Neverland

I have done it. SQUEE!
For a long time I've known that I wanted to move away from traditional family portraits and toward something more creative, and more indicative of the spirit of the family that I'm working with.
Don't get me wrong, I love traditional family portraits because they are classic and stand the test of time. But they don't move me. They don't tell a story. There is no magic in them, and all my life I feel as if I've been chasing magic.
I had all kinds of ideas to make this happen, but no families willing to take a risk and step off into Neverland with me.

Until now.

A project like this took quite a bit of planning. I story boarded ideas (I wont embarrass myself with those sketches) and brainstormed with the Mom about what angle to take. At first, we thought that we might have the family play the roles of Peter, Wendy and the lost boys...what could be more perfect for a family with 3 wild little boys? But something didn't sit right.
The whole purpose of portraits like these was to say something about the family and who they are together. If they are playing parts, then they aren't being themselves. It struck me that it would be much better if the family were taken off to Neverland themselves. INSPIRATION struck.
I immediately knew what I wanted to do.

Each photo is a composite of several photos.
The background had to be photographed separately, with the camera on a tripod. Then the family members were photographed in the scene so that I could remove the tools we used in order to make them appear to be flying, such as stools, ladders and a couple of times even Mom and Dad's feet!

The pieces were all composited together in Photoshop, where Tinkerbell and Peter himself made an appearance, and the final product is what you see below.

It sounds awfully technical, right? Let me tell you, we had SO much fun. There was a lot of silliness, a lot of laughing, and quite a bit of jumping around. Mom and Dad told me that their boys had NEVER begged to have their photos taken before. That was quite an accomplishment by itself!

I feel like the results speak for themselves.

I look at these images, and I see a family that loves to be together, that is warm, adventurous, and a bit silly.

What do YOU see? I would love to hear from you, and even more, I would love to take an amazing journey like this with YOUR family. Oh what wonderful worlds we could see!









6 comments:

  1. Wonderful. I had to sign in to Google just to let you know. I especially love the last one.

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  2. Thank you Rod, it's great to such positive feedback!!

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  3. Thank you, Veronica! It was a lot of fun :)

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  4. Ha ha! I love them!

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  5. Thanks Lorretta :) So do I!

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