Advanced Pro - Homework #1

I am so happy to be a part of Brooke Snow's Advanced Pro class!  Here are some images and commentary from my first assignment.

The assignment was to prepare a specific photo shoot in a new location with lots of notes of what you wanted to do.  As I thought about a potential subject, I remembered a conversation I had with my sister in law recently.  She called to ask me if I had any current pictures of my father in law since she was updating her family photo collage.  Despite all my picture taking, I had not one in the past five years of Nate looking at the camera.  He's slightly camera shy :)

So, when I called him to ask for his help, he reluctantly agreed after saying, "I wish you'd wait until I lost 50lbs!"  When talking to family about it, he told them that I was contacted by my camera company to see if there was a way I could test out if I could actually break my lens.

I don't think Nate is alone in feeling this way...sadly, most people are reluctant to get in front of the camera!  But I was determined to capture Grandpa Nate NOW because we love him just the way he is and don't want to miss the next five years.

FOR BROOKE'S REVIEW:

Other thoughts on the shoot:

The small town library was a super hard challenge!  It was poorly lit, despite some big windows and then it ended up being an overcast day.  Not to mention that we got started later than I wanted, and the sun was going down.  I had to shoot at a higher ISO (640) and try to move to the windows.  Thus, I ended up converting a lot to black and white.  The next day Nate told me that I was really "intense" during the shoot.  I asked him to explain what he meant and he said that he realized how serious I was about photography and how I was really working to get what I wanted.  I hope that in the future I won't let the circumstances of the lighting and posing make it so serious :)  

I really enjoyed finding poses through stock photography, both for Nate alone and a few with the kids.  It is not very often that I shoot middle age men by themselves, so it was a new and interesting challenge.  It was good practice for me to direct what I wanted with a physical copy of the posing since Nate was not naturally comfortable being the center of attention.  Enjoy the rest, just for fun!