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Out with the Old(er)…..

March 19, 2010

It’s been a bit odd walking into Conner’s nursery the past 8 weeks and seeing a decent size image of Little Jack displayed above Conner’s dresser. Since the nursery used to be Little Jack’s room, we kept almost everything the same, but just haven’t gotten around to replacing the canvas portrait of Jack. However yesterday, thanks to the awesome peeps at Pixel2Canvas we were finally able to complete the biggest update to Conner’s nursery. 

Here was the nursery with the portrait of Jack displayed…….

 

And here’s the nursery with Conner’s image displayed……

Jack & Conner, updated!

March 10, 2010

A few weeks back I posted new portraits of my nephew and twin nieces‘, however it made me think that it’s been awhile since I created new updated portraits of my sons, especially our 2 1/2 year old, Jack.  (espcially since THIS is the last “portrait” we have of him!)

The setup was still in place from the Twin’s portraits, so we just plugged Jack & Conner into the same spot, crossed our fingers and hoped that the little dude would cooperate.

…..Not bad considering his attention level lasted long enough to make about 15 frames…….

….Conner was a bit more cooperative…..but then again he’s not exactly very mobile…….

Katie & Chris are getting married this summer, but we managed to make it out for their engagement pictures around the city

Chris is a hockey player, and the funny thing about their wedding is they are getting married on July 31….which just “happens” to be Chris’ hockey jersey (sweater) number.  So they came up with this cute idea for their “save the date” cards.

The results of the ISPWP’s winter 2009 contest have been released, and I’m proud to say I placed two images in two different categories.  I’m not really that big on contests, because they are so subjective, and ultimately, it’s the brides’ opinion of my photographs that really counts, not what other photographers think.  However, if you take a look at some of the other winning images in the galleries it’s pretty cool to see your name and image alongside some pretty incredible pictures.

10th PLACE | BRIDE PORTRAIT
Jay Crihfield | Jay Crihfield Photography | Chicago Wedding Photographer

Bride Portrait
See This Photographer's Website

18th PLACE | VENUE/LOCATION
Jay Crihfield | Jay Crihfield Photography | Chicago Wedding Photographer

See This Photographer's Website

JUDGE COMMENTS:
A good scene setter.

Now that Baby’s Conner’s birth announcements have gone out, I got the go-ahead to post his official, home-from-the-hospital newborn portraits!

Out with 2009, in with 2010!

December 31, 2009

One last slideshow for 2009 featuring some of my favorite wedding images from the past year.  I also wanted to take this opportunity to revisit an awesome band/singer that I met this year by featuring the music of Aubyn Beth!  Definitely keep your eyes and ears open for this group in 2010!

2009 Year in Review!

December 28, 2009

With 2010 rapidly approaching, I wanted to send out a huge “THANKS” too all the brides from 2009 who allowed me to photograph their weddings!

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Christmas Card “How-To”

December 17, 2009

I’ve received a lot of comments on my Christmas Card , so I thought I’d share the techie, “how-to” set-up for this particular photograph.

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It was actually a pretty easy setup, the biggest challenge with this shoot was getting my 2 year old “model” to cooperate.  For the lighting setup, the trick is to not overpower the Christmas tree lights with any additional lights you might use to light your subject.  This need for a highly directional and focused light eliminated the possibility of using a sofbox on Jack’s face.  Instead, I used a single Elinchrom studio strobe, with a 10 degree grid spot attached to the front of the reflector.  The grid focusses the light down to a small spot on the floor, which only lights up the area where Jack is laying down. While a grid is not exactly the softest light source around, the fact that Jack is only 2, and has smooth skin and round features, it works.

So that takes care of the lighting from the right side.  However because Jack is facing to the left, his face would fall completely into a dark shadow.  The look that I wanted was his face to appear as if it was lit by the christmas tree lights themselves.  The only problem with tree lights is their intensity is very low (great for your electric bill, bad for your photographs).  So I added a 2nd light (a Canon 580EX)  behind the tree out of the frame, and bounced it into the corner of two walls.  The bounced light off of the walls comes under and through the tree just enough to provide some additional fill on Jack’s face.  All of the lights were triggered courtesy of the ridiculously versatile RadioPopper system (JRx transmitter and reciever to fire the Elinchrom, and a Px transmitter and receiver to fire the 580Ex slave)  Even though this was an all manual setup, I could’ve used the the Canon 580 in its TTL mode and let the RadioPopper handle the communication between the master and the slave.

Since the color temperature of the tree lights is somewhere in the tungsten region (very warm), the flash heads were both gelled with an amber gel to match the color temperature of the tree lights.

Now that the direction of the lights is taken care of, all that is left is to figure out the exposure settings.  In order for the tree lights to show up and actually “twinkle,” you need a  a small aperture which requires a longer shutter speed.  A couple of test shots confirmed that an aperture somewhere between f6.3 and f8.0 would be enough to get the sparkle from the lights, and a shutter speed of 1/8 at ISO 400 let in enough ambient light to see the detail of the tree and the ornaments.  Now that I know what my ambient reading is, the last step is simply to adjust the output of the strobes to match my exposure settings (It sounds a bit backward, but that’s how I figure out the proper exposure for combined ambient and flash exposures.  If the exposure was all strobe, you simply meter, set the camera, and go).  I adjusted the output of the main to about f5.6, and the fill light to about f4.0 (honestly, I didn’t meter the fill, I just set the main, and then fired a couple of test frames with different settings on the fill to get it where I wanted).

There wasn’t a lof of post-production Photoshop work on this one, other than adding the text elements and some burning and dodging.  A lot of people thought my last “before & after” window was kinda cool, so here’s the “out-of-camera” version and the final product:



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Take a look at the window above, the left side of the screen is the original image, and the right side is the fully finished photograph. Use the links at the bottom to go back and forth between the original picture from the camera, and the fully finished photograph.

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It was cold on Saturday….really, really cold once the sun went away, and then to top it off it started snowing/raining/sleeting a bit when we got to the park for pictures.  Considering how nasty it was, we had time for exactly two pictures….this is the first one…….

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…..and this is the 2nd one.  I think Laurie & Mike would’ve killed me if I tried to keep them out any longer taking pictures!

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But after dinner things really heated up when the band Audiomatic strapped it on and cranked up the tunes……..

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….ya gotta have more cowbell!

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And then to top it off….the lovely bride sat in with the band and serenaded her groom!

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Happy Holidays!

December 14, 2009

It only took 3 hours to get Little Jack to co-operate enough to get this image made.  However I think the result was totally worth it!  Here’s the official 2009 Jay Crihfield Photography Holiday Card.  If you’d like to take a look at the past year’s versions, simply click here for 2008, or click here for 2007

holiday childrens portrait christmas tree pictures

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