For photowalk 4 of 52 we decided to take the kids to a park. We live in central BC, Canada so this time of year is pretty chilly. (It’s actually been unseasonably warm these last two weeks and just got down closer to average temperature just before we went on this outing.) The temperature was about -11C, which works out to 12F.
We bundled the kids up in their outdoor clothes, brought along the new puppy and went to play on the equipment. The photos below are the first 4 keepers, I have about 4 more to do editing on. They will go on my flickr, and may make up a second post on here.
The reason I decided to shoot the kids for this one is that I have the most trouble with kid photography. I love the idea, and want to do it, but the images never work out in real life the way they do in my mind. This day was a success for me, and I’m very happy with the pictures I have of my kids from it.
Again I’ve been using a new post processing workflow. First I edit in lightroom for exposure etc. Then I open the image in a .TIFF in photoshop and play around with that, mostly still using the actions from mcpactions.com Touch of Light/Dark and the free Gallery Frames are my go-to for this – I may have to invest in a couple of her actions in the near future.
This first one of Dylan is my favourite of the day so far. This was a challenging post production shot because of the high contrast of sunny spots on her face etc. I used lots of touch of light to lighten the shadowed parts of her face and coat, and lots of touch of dark to darken the sunny spots and background to bring everything just a little closer together contrast wise.
My second favourite of the day is Ivy climbing down the cable net. This one got a strong vignette when I was done, as well as lots of touch of light on her coat to really make it pop. The rest of the image got treated to touch of dark – mostly to highten the contrast of the pink jacket against the background.
This one of Dylan I cleaned up her face lots – to my eye it looks pretty good, but to someone more discerning perhaps my stamp skills are not as good. It’s something I’m working on. Otherwise, a little lightening, but most of the PP was just to clean her face up.
And last but not least is Ivy on the slide. It’s my least favourite of the completed shots, but I was most excited while taking it. I’m not sure why, it just didn’t turn out in my mind the way I’d have liked it to. It’s still good enough to share however.
And there we go – the first batch from photowalk 4. This is the first photowalk that I’ve had so many keeper images from – and it’s one of the most challenging things for me to shoot – kids. They just move so fast!
Jeff Closs Photography 