Sister Power

Here's the results of my "practice" photo shoot with the neighborhood kids.

I was down to the day of my other photography engagement and still hadn't been able to pin the family down so I settled for tagging along with them when they took their dog for a walk.

Midday in the summer is not the optimal time for taking photographs but I made do by finding a shady spot under a tree by our subdivision entry sign!

After walking the dog they made a quick outfit change and we picked a spot down by the lake to take some more.  Of course getting a squirmy 6 year old boy to settle down and pose presents some challenges.

 But I got a few shots in before I had to negotiate by letting him push the button a few times.

 Of course that backfired on me when he had a hard time letting others have a turn, including me!

Patient but firm, that's the secret, and keeping it light, positive and above all fun.

I can't take credit for the photo above, I'm pretty sure the other sister took that one.  Tripods make letting the kids have a turn much easier!  I used the Canon 24-70mm lens for all of the pictures, but have decided it is just too heavy for hiking and returned it at the end of the day.  If I ever quit hiking and start shooting not far from my car I would definitely invest in it though.  I'm thinking for the price and the weight I will prefer the 300mm lens that I haven't even tried out yet, I'm saving that for the wildlife in Colorado and South Dakota coming up.  It's a lens that won't be in my backpack often, more likely to be used not far from the car capturing large wildlife or birds during our travels.

My favorite shot is this one of the girls in black and white, but it really could benefit from Lightroom to fix the shadows on the faces.  I'm kind of digging their "Sister Power" pose below that they came up with too.

I tried researching free photo editing software, but didn't find anything that sounded any better than the Windows Photos app I currently use, and I discovered the "retouch" button which took care of a few blemishes.  Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop and Lightroom) wants $9.99 a month with a one year contract for their software and last time I tried their free trial it kept freezing my computer so I had to take a pass on that even though these midday photos could benefit from the ability to lighten or darken specific sections instead of the whole image. Tomorrow I'll post the shots from my other shoot, I think they turned out kind of terrific for someone who usually has insects and wildflowers for subjects!