Category: Photography

Photo of the day: Writer’s Block

Oh the photos! Oh the cuteness! Oh the fun!

It has been a really spectacular week in photos for me. From meeting new neighbours and working with old friends on the weekend to photographing my first-ever Bat Mizvah this coming weekend, with a quick stop for mid-week adorable today, it’s an insanely busy week but oh so much fun!

You might remember this young lady from the spring session I did with her family. Mom wanted a photo of her showing off her newly acquired habit of sitting up, so we did a few traditional portraits on the porch (I’ll share those soon!) but then she let me have a bit of a creative play. I had originally conceived an idea that involved giant colourful balloons and a basket and a ladder – but maybe it’s best that I never did get organized enough to execute that one. (See aforementioned reference to crazy busy!) Instead, we came up with this:

Writer's Block

I call it “Writer’s Block.” 🙂

Stay tuned, more unbearable cuteness to share soon!

Photo of the day: Apple box (before and after)

When it comes to editing portraits, I tend to prefer a “clean edit” – tweaks for contrast, exposure, and vibrance (I love saturated colours!), but not too much more. Well, I also have a hopeless addiction to vignettes. But sometimes I see something that just cries out for a more artistic play, like this crate that was lying around in the apple orchard just begging me to take its photo.

apple box after

I’ll freely admit that I really went to town on this one. I used not one but two texture layers and the oil painting filter in Photoshop. It comes very close to what I wanted though – an impressionistic interpretation of the original image. Just for reference, here’s the *coughboringcough* clean edit before I started heaping layers on it.

apple box before

I had to really pull down the contrast to make the apples stand out more, and then I used textures with lots of warm golden tones and a bit of edge burning for the vignette effect. I like it, but I’m not totally in love with this one. It’s still too much just a picture of a box to me – I think because the original photo wasn’t quite as strong as it could be. THAT’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again — all the fancy digital editing in the world rarely helps a mediocre photo be anything more than mediocre. It’s still missing a little je ne sais quoi – but because it’s just a photo I was playing with for funsies, it’s good enough for sharing.

What do you think? Are you interested in the details of how to do stuff like this?

Photo(s) of the day: Kerry’s family

It’s not every family that would let you pull out the silly props on a stick for their family photo shoot. But when it IS that sort of family, it makes for a REALLY fun family photo session!

Silly prop family portrait fun by Danielle Donders

It wasn’t all silliness, but laughter comprised a good part of the morning. That and a truly lovely family made for a whole lot of great photos.

Adult outdoor family portrait by Danielle Donders

My first love will always be taking portraits of kids at play, but it turns out playful grownups can be just as much fun — and maybe even a whole lot less work!

Thanks to Kerry and your sweet family for a lovely Sunday morning out! 🙂

Photo of the day: First birthday portraits on the porch

Steady yourself. This photo has dangerous levels of adorable in it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

This lovely little lady came to the porch on the weekend for portraits for her first birthday. Is she not the most precious thing?

Portrait of one year old girl

But oh, if you think THIS photo is cute, you should see some of the other ones. We’re talking pink tutus, fairy wings and chubby little baby toes, people. I’ll share more once I finish editing the rest of them, but this is one of those galleries that I can’t wait to share with the family.

You really have to work hard to get portraits of a moving baby (equal parts patience, silliness and sore quadriceps from getting up and down off the floor!) but with a beauty like this, they’re more than worth the effort! And lookit those eyelashes…. *swoon*

Photo of the day: Shine, baby!

Guess what I did today? Okay, so it was supposed to be a 45th birthday present to myself and I’m a little late, but it’s still my birthday month!

Inked!

Why “shine”? Because it makes me happy, of course! It’s an imperative, for one thing – a sort of reminder to myself that “shine” is exactly what I should always strive to do. And because my Granda’s song was always “You are my sunshine” and because I sang that to all three boys when they were babies. And because of John Lennon’s “We all shine on” and summer sunshine and Lake of Shining Waters, among others. And because we should all shine whenever we can, right?

And why stars? Because they are meaningful to me, and I’m always drawn to star patterns. And of course there are three of them – I do love things that come in threes. And they are red, blue and green, which happen to be two of three boys’ favourite colours. And if you know anything about photography or design, you’ll know what RGB means. I managed to resist getting an actual camera tattoo (barely!) but I couldn’t resist a little photo-geekery in the symbolism.

I love it. LOVE it! It’s better than I hoped it would be. I’ll share the whole experience of designing and actually getting the tattoo in a separate blog post.

What do you think?

Photo of the day: Splashing at the beach

We spent the day with some friends at the beach. This is pretty much how it went.

boys at the beach

I like how the black and white reduces the moment to the movement and the moment, and I put just a bit of warmth in the shadows because it was warm and sunny. I’m really liking black and white photography lately, especially for story-telling photos.

Speaking of stories, that’s something I’d really love to do more of with my professional sessions this autumn. Planning a trip to the apple orchard or pumpkin picking or just a picnic and wander in the park? Why not bring a photographer along to document the day? I’m considering offering a special package deal for this autumn, but with a limited number of sessions. What do you think?

Photo of the day: Kayaker at Chapman Mills

We have long loved the Chapman Mills conservation area. It’s a beautiful little piece of nature tucked in between a busy Barrhaven suburb and the Rideau River. I was worried that the new Strandherd-Armstrong bridge would ruin this peaceful little oasis, but if anything the boardwalk is more lovely than ever.

I loved the tranquility in the original version of this photo, but something about those breeze in those leaves and bullrushes cried out for painterly brush strokes, so I had a little fun in Photoshop. What do you think?

Kayaker at Chapman Mills

I’ll post a few more photos of our wander along the boardwalk and under the bridge later this week. 🙂

Photo of the day: Family reunion

Sometimes, no matter how carefully you plan a photo session, you have to throw out all your research and ideas and just go with the flow. That was the name of the game yesterday when this big family came together from locations across Canada and overseas for a family portrait. Because there were to be no opportunities for do-overs, we had a plan and a backup plan. And in the way life often works, we ended up forgoing all of that and throwing together a Plan C on the fly to get this portrait while stormy skies threatened a deluge.

Family reunion

Lucky for me, they were a great gang with a fun sense of humour, and this was only one of a series of fun family shots we got. My favourite thing about photography is still meeting new people and learning a little bit about them and their families, and it’s always such an honour to be invited to be a part of days like this. But yeesh, big group portraits are tough. Give me a couple of toddlers to wrangle any day! 😉