Portraits of a Dapper Young Man

In addition to creating portraits of children while participating in their favourite activities, I also like to capture them in a more sophisticated light, often wearing something of their choice that they are comfortable in. In this case this lovely young man choose this suit jacket, t-shirt and jeans which I thought was absolutely perfect. And I could see he was proud to be wearing it.

Putting a person, whether it is a child or adult, in something they are comfortable wearing is so important. If they don't feel comfortable it will show in their portraits. And that is the last thing we want.

I discovered this recently with my daughter when I tried her out in a new dress I had acquired for the studio and quickly realised I was wrong. I couldn't make her be someone she isn't. She isn't a pretty dress sort of girl and it really showed in her portraits. I've decided to scrap those ones now and get her to wear something she is comfortable in (likely to be a sweatshirt and jeans) and try again. This is who she is at this point in her life and this is what I should try to capture. I'll be interested to see how her second lot of portraits will compare to the dress images. I suspect they'll be loads better. I just have to figure out a way of getting her to agree to sitting for me once more.

It took us a bit to bring this young man out of his shell but this is something I pride myself in being able to do. The way I like to work means there are no time constraints. We work until we get the job done, not until some allotted session time is over. So I am more relaxed and I hope so are my clients. We were able to have a chat with him for a while until he was comfortable to begin. I know not everyone will be ready to perform for a camera straight away and it matters more to me that they are ready and comfortable otherwise I'm potentially just wasting my time. In almost all cases, including the children I meet doing school photography, I am able to convince them to work with me. Just sometimes it takes longer than others.

Once we got started though, everything went smoothly. We got the formal shots and then moved on to the football shots. He was very proud to wear his new football kit and had a lot of fun kicking the ball around which made the session a lot easier. In the end he did great and I know his family will love his portraits.

And again this makes a lovely keepsake for the family. I love looking back on my stepson's photos from when he was cute and little wearing his first Leicester kit. I'm sure in years to come this family will love looking back on these. Kids don't stay sweet and little for very long.

To get in touch or book a session you can either ring us on 01455 611069, follow this link to our contact us page on our website, or send us a message via our Facebook page here. We look forward to hearing from you.

Comments

London in Spring, Whats Not to Love?

Well I know there is still a lot not to love but I'm choosing to see the great things about London at the moment. I am having a ball this year visiting London as often as I can. Which is unusual for me since I usually prefer the comfort of my own home, in rural old Leicestershire. Staying home and avoiding people has always been the easy option. But this year, possibly due to the wonderful weather we keep having, has me longing for venturing out. Again, just like my last trip, I headed out with my good friend Panikos Hajistilly . Living in North London he finds it easy to meet up for our shoots. This time though I had more of an idea of the sights I wanted to use as the backdrops for my portraits. With it being spring I was in search of colour, preferably flowers. Admittedly. I didn't quite get what I was looking for. The white fronted terraced houses with pink magnolia trees we did not find unfortunately. But I did make it to Peggy Porchen's which was a must see on m...

Portraits of a Newborn Baby Girl and Her Family

Its always so nice when a family return to have their latest addition photographed in the same way as their first child. Its a great feeling knowing they cherished my work so much the first time that they want to come back to continue the tradition. I also love it when I'm given permission to share the portraits I've created. Its not often that I'm asked not to share but I never take this opportunity for granted because I know how sensitive people can be about sharing personal moments. And I'm especially grateful here for being allowed to share some of the more intimate ones. Although I always ask permission to share the standard stuff I create, I always make it known that I am fine with and fully understand if there are any private portraits that should remain so. In this case I was given full permission to share everything and I'm so pleased to get the chance to show some of the other work we can do for families. I really love how skin tones turn out ...

Baby Frankie

Well I suppose its about time I got back to blogging. I used to love writing blogs and was always thrilled to post them so I could get some feedback. But I drifted away from blogging and have found it difficult to return. Since I've been rather busy lately I thought I'd take the opportunity to share over these next few weeks all that I've been up to. I've had some great sessions with babies, families and even adults. And even did some product work, cremation jewelry believe it or not. And now, today, the school portraits season has begun. So I will be very busy over these next few months but that should provide me with loads to share. I thought I'd kick off the blogging with some work for a returning client with their latest addition to the family, Frankie. They did as advised and came over for a session when Frankie was about 2 weeks old. Ideally between 10-14 days is great. In fact they ...

Never Work With Children or Animals

Or so the saying goes. But I have to say that working with dogs has been so lovely. They have been almost entirely a dream to work with. I say almost entirely because we have had a few moments where a dog has needed to settle. And one moment where the dog had settled but one of my cats decided to have a look through the glass door which, as you can imagine, rather quickly unsettled the dog. Still, that didn't stop us from creating incredible work. In fact it was during that shoot with the cat instance when I created two of my favourite pieces, shown below. (It was while sitting on the couch here when he noticed the cat peering through the curtain) I don't know if I've just been lucky or all dogs are just easy to work with. I photographed a french bull dog puppy and I thought that would be tough as he hadn't had time to be properly trained yet. But he did everything we wanted in no time at all. And this included the props we used here (below), which to me...

My Work Experience Week by Hester Sharpe

A week in the life of a Photographers assistant, is not all about saying cheese! I’m Hester Sharpe, currently at JCC but took a week out of normal school life on work experience to be a photographer’s assistant and learn the bits behind the camera, photograph and the process to get to the end result. During my week of work experience in photography I have learnt that there is a lot more than just taking the pictures and printing them. The steps in between are the key to getting the perfect photo. For example the photos have to be cropped, tweaked, edited, colour corrected. That is just a taste I have had in the processing of the photos and there is a lot more than just those things. Those processes are the most time consuming part of the photograph and a tremendous amount of detail is put in to the picture but all the hours spent are paid off with the end result; a perfect picture. It isn’t just how the picture looks; presentation is a key to photography too. Selecting the best ...

Christina Lauder Portraits

Search This Blog