Christmas Portraits In A Park

Creating Christmas portraits in a historical park is almost like cheating. Specially around Christmas time, most of them have some kind of Christmas event with Santa coming, so they are all decorated for their time period.

and old barns, maybe even a couple of fences to work with. Now while the houses are usually well maintained with fresh paint, the barns normally are just maintained good enough. Leaving lots of old wood wall with some great textures.

All these photographs in this series were created using just a little bit of helper light, aka... a single studio strobe. Now you might be asking why would I need a studio light when it was so bright outside? Well, several reasons behind that.

When the sun is shining it makes the colors pop and then when the sun goes behind the clouds the pop of color goes aways and kind of tints everything blue. That makes for a lot of work fixing it in the computer.

And then without a flash I’m limited to the colors being reflected around me. That’s not a problem when there are white or gray walls, but green grass or leaves on trees… big problem. Skin tones just aren’t as pretty then. Now yes, I could bring a reflector with me. But then I need some one to hold it and hope the wind isn’t blowing to hard… that’s one good size kite.

Also, I want wanted to make sure the colors popped and that there was enough light in Isabel’s eyes. After all it’s the eyes that make or break a photograph.

Only one photograph, the one below, in this series has darks eyes. In that photograph the story wasn’t with her eyes but her hand and lips. Putting light in her eye would have been a distraction.