Presenting a 9 year old Finnish girl, her reindeer, a book on antique Finnish maps, and a beautiful snowy day in January.

The light and scenery is so exquisite this time of year.  Soft and light and lovely.  We’re fortunate to have a mild Winter – not too cold for tea parties with friends!

I’m happy to play with both the old and the new: the traditional white and black graduation cap in a timeless Finnish setting.  In this case, a location in the lovely city of Kauniainen.

This Summer, I am pleased to announce two special workshops, the 29th and 30th that I’ve taught:

The Big Picture Workshop: Australia (click here for more information).  At the Surfers Paradise studio of Wild Spirit photography.  Limited to 15 only.   June 18th and 19th.  Note: only 1 seat left before it is sold out!

Surfers Paradise 2009

The Big Picture Workshop: Europe (click here for more information).  Limited to 10 only. July 17th and 18th at my studio in Helsinki, Finland.

Tapiola, Finland

Of course, with that much golden sun out there, I’m going to take advantage of it!  I love the glow and warmth from shooting out in that full sun.  It really exemplifies the beauty that is Spring and the emergence from a very long Winter!

This shoot was all about using a longer focal length lens to let background compression retain the far background in the bokeh or to overcome height issues due to the perfect spot being atop a large mound.   We had only a few minutes here before the sun disappeared and rain threatened again.  But oh how I love the color and feel of Autumn in Finland.

These were all shot with natural light and no reflectors or modifiers.  The light was just so sweet at this particular moment and I am so grateful for the time I spent learning how to read that light and shoot it to its best.

And how could I resist a portrait from the reflections in a puddle.

I do get lucky, though, with being able to photograph such beautiful families.  The littlest one was so happy – he woke up with a smile and I don’t think I saw it leave his face all afternoon.  Their little girl had enough energy and personality to make any photographer happy – perhaps my only challenge was keeping that shutter speed high enough to make sure I didn’t get any motion blur!  And her elder sister was a treat – one of those rare tweens who didn’t mind helping with the shoot and working with me to elicit great expressions from her younger siblings.

Here is a sneak peek from the session – just a few black and whites (this session is so remarkable in black and white!) and one color!  Truly, I must have the best clients in all the world!

And one color image – she was such a lovely soul:

When Heidi contacted me about doing the shoot, I was very eager. She was looking for a magical, nostalgic type of feel using her mother’s hand sewn wedding dress from four decades previous. Now, usually I would be very apprehensive to shoot a wedding dress – they tend to be shiney satin and reflect light back heavily – making it difficult to keep the whites of the dress in good tonality for the rest of the image. But Heidi reassured me the dress was not made of satin and would photograph beautifully. And she was right!

Typically, with models I prefer to bring a lighting rig and really control all aspects of the tonality of the image. But in this instance, I didn’t want to be limited to 2-3 locations and having to set up the rig for each location. I wanted to get much more natural shots and use the location’s fantastic lighting sources to bring the drama and mystery to the images.

To really create drama within the images, I did go for very directional lighting, avoiding flat lighting for the most part and letting the light play across each scene and enhance the subject and let her stand out from the busy-ness of a forest. One challenge was to keep white birch bark from glowing unnaturally and distracting from my subject. And some areas we used meant climbing through areas off the paths and a bit difficult to get to without hiking boots!

For the water shots, I am standing in the water up to my knees. The bottom of the lake is strewn with mossy covered slippery small and large rocks. It makes navigating and moving difficult for both the model and the photographer. I am very lucky that Heidi is such a pro and was able to navigate along the lake bed without slipping and falling in! The rocks don’t feel too nice to step on either. I’m fortunate that in all the times I’ve shot in lakes, I still haven’t go in with the equipment!

For the lake shots, we did have to do them at the very end of the shoot after the sun had set. When the sun is in the sky, it blasts the area with full sun that is very difficult t shoot in. So if you see Heidi in the water, it is after sunset and I ended up having to use a rather high ISO due to the lack of light.

We finished the shoot with some images in a gorgeous red dress Heidi had bought from Thailand. It was a great way to highlight the hair work done by MUA Cemille.

The one drawback of not having the lighting rig is that there was no way to get all the colors of the beautiful sunset in the image. But in all, I was quite pleased with the end result. I thank Heidi and Cemille for the 2 hours in hair/makeup and then also for trooping all over the forest and lake to get those unique locations!

And from earlier in the evening:

When I arrived with all my newborn set up (nothing takes more hands than everything needed to do baby shots!), I was greeted with tall windows in an “L” shape. That made getting the light rather tricky since I had less directionality. There was also a lot of direct sunlight spilling into the room onto the wood floors – and reflecting up with strong color casts. One of the first things we had to do was close the blinds a bit (which unfortunately kills some of the light) and then lay out black fleece on the floor where the light was still coming in. I’m very lucky in that my clients are always really nice about moving furniture when needed – and this time we moved a large ficus and some miscellaneous furniture to make sure we had the best light and a clean set up.

The grandparents arrived right on time and we started with their shots. They were so proud of their grandson (the first for that family!) and I just loved photographing their happiness. Both grandmother and grandfather took turns holding the little guy and he was so happy to be in their arms! I have the most beautiful shots of the baby looking up adoringly at them as the ‘coo’ and love him. He is one very lucky little boy!

After the family shots, we brought out the props for the baby art. Our little guy was kind enough to fall right to sleep for us! He was easy to position and looked so happy resting peacefully. I don’t do the more extreme ‘head on hands’ shots and instead concentrated on the beauty of this perfect and very loved little person. He was fortunate enough to have been born to be cherished by a great set of parents and I think that peacefulness is what I wanted most to capture. Each family has its own vibe and personality and it is the job of the professional photographer to understand that flow and photograph it respectfully. All the props chosen for this shoot were reflective of that family’s style.

Newborn work is surprisingly hard – even though babies don’t exactly run away from you. Portrait work is so much more clicking a shutter and requires a huge amount of concentration. I think as runners are ‘in the moment’, so too are photographers. And photographing a newborn shoot is just as exhausting as running several miles. But photography has the advantage of producing such beautiful results!

A huge congratulations to this wonderful family on their firstborn. He’s a lucky little man to be born into so much love.