The Murphy Family Photo Shoot

Most of the pictures that I take are usually of landscapes, places, and events (with the exception of a few self portraits and an occasional shot of Rachel when she feels cooperative).  Taking more pictures of people and getting practice at portraiture is something that I intend to spend more time on.  So, when my Aunt Bianca asked me to take some pictures of her family I happily obliged.

I tried to keep expectations low since this was my 1st attempt at a family photo shoot.  Ultimately, I shot over a thousand pictures so I knew some of them would be good.  However, with more practice I hope to shoot less and have even more usable shots.  I quickly realized that the main challenge when shooting young kids is that inevitably one of them will always look away.  And once you get that one to look, another one will look away, and so on and so forth.  This rendered about 1 in 10 shots usable.  But when you find that one that is right, it is very rewarding.  I also realized the benefit of additional equipment that I do not own.  Mainly a good Flash which I plan on purchasing next week and some tools for using the sun such as diffusers and reflectors.

Overall, my little cousins were great and they were as well behaved as you can expect little kids to be when you are making them sit still to take pictures.  They all have a lot of personality and I think it showed best  in more of the candid and individual shots.  I also experimented with some different post-processing styles depending on the shot.  Below are some of the pictures that I liked best.  Big thanks to Unc P, Aunt B, Sean, Jack, and Joe for letting me shoot them.  And as always thank you for taking the time to check out Dirty Thirty Photography!