Bennett Family | Portland Family Photographer

This is the family that won my PDX Kids Calendar giveaway last month!  I must admit, however, that I felt like I had won a contest when they showed up in the cutest outfits ever–a palette of greys accented by warm pinks, purples, & reds, contrasting patterns, and beautiful textured fabrics!  There were also sequined boots involved… it’s true!

I loved meeting this family, especially mama Laura, who has a BFA in photography and a wealth of experience in “old school” fine art film photography.  Brought me back to the old days of developing film, using an enlarger, etc.  I went to this fantastic grade 4-12 arts magnet school in San Diego, and we had the best darkroom facility that I’ve seen to this day (and the best teacher!). I have always felt very passionate about all that stuff, but I have grown to love digital photography even more now.  There is something about all those chemicals that I never trusted…

PDX Kids Calendar Portrait | Portland Family Photographer

This past weekend I met up with Ali & Tabitha from PDX Kids Calendar to take a few photos to say “thank you!” for their help on a recent promotion & giveaway at www.pdxkidscalendar.com  They are pretty much celebs around these parts so it was really fun and exciting to plan a shoot for them.

We chose two locations… first location is Sellwood Park, which is a gorgeous natural park overlooking Oaks Park amusement center, with a gorgeous view of the downtown Portland mini skyline.  As the kids warmed up to me, I took some larger group photos, and then I forced Ali & Tabitha them to pose with a taxidermied (is that a word?) squirrel named Mort that I borrowed from a friend.  I thought it fitting since their PDX Kids Calendar logo has a squirrel in it.  Luckily that didn’t creep them out too too much and they allowed me to continue taking their pics at Nectar Frozen Yogurt Lounge in Sellwood afterwards. What a cute location for a photo shoot, and the staff at Nectar couldn’t be nicer!  We had some pumpkin frozen yogurt, YUM.

For most of the park photos I used my 50 mm 1.4 lens with no flash or reflectors, and in the yogurt shop I used my 35-70 with a Speedlite & umbrella on a light stand triggered by an on-camera master/Gary Fong LightSphere (sometimes master enabled, sometimes just used as a trigger).

Fun day, gorgeous pictures!

Portrait of Three Generations | Edgefield | Portland Family Photographer

When I was considering locations for this family of eight, it occurred to me what a spectacular location Edgefield would be for a portrait.  I got married there, so I already know some good locales for portraits, plus it’s fall and there is beautiful foliage and interesting details to spice up the photos. I was patting myself on the back for thinking of such a cool and interesting location.

Well… turns out I am one of MANY who thought of this idea that same day!  It was a spectacular fall day when we took these photos, and I didn’t just see a couple of other groups doing portraits there–I kid you not there were at least 10 photographers there.  I think a lot of them were doing some last-minute seniors since the yearbook deadlines are approaching as well as families doing holiday portraits.  Lots of portraits to be done this time of year!

I had a lot of fun with this family, especially the two middle-schoolers.  They remind me of my art students, totally cool kids! You can see why photographers choose Edgefield; look at the beautiful color in these photos:

For this shoot, I used my Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 mm zoom lens for versatility.  The light was perfect, and I was able to stay at 100 ISO without adding light with a flash or even a reflector.  Sweet  🙂