Homecoming 2015

Last night was Kyle's homecoming dance.  I first met this young man when he was three years old.  I don't know where the time went and I cannot believe what a young man he is now.  I was lucky enough to take some pictures of Kyle and his girlfriend before the dance.  His girlfriend is a beautiful, sweet young lady who is on the cheerleading squad.  I only mention that because she seems to naturally know exactly how to stand and pose!  I tried to take shots from the pick up through pictures at the park....a little bit of a story.  A couple of the shots are slightly blurry due to movement.  Despite that, I think they turned out okay.  It was grey and chilly out....nice if you're wearing two sweaters....downright cold if your dressed for the homecoming dance!

At Emily's house.

They were ready to get out of there.

A little blurred in parts, but I really wanted to show off Emily's awesome shoes!!

What a gentleman, putting her in the car.

At the park to take pictures and Emily runs into a friend.

Walking over to the waterfall.

Waiting for the adults to get organized.

Still waiting and now she's freezing!

Flowers

Corsage

This one probably turned out the best.

Black and white.

Kyle and his mother

Kyle and his father

All of us...the eyes are blurred.

Despite the goofing off, this shot turned out well.

Kyle, his mother, and other dad.

Sepia tone

Kyle, Emily, and Emily's little brother

At this point, the kids were done with me and my pictures.  I could hardly get them to stand still.

Last one, I promise!!!  I can tell by the look on his face, Kyle is ready to go!

I caught this one by accident when I was just testing out the light and settings.

Again, another test shot.  I think Emily's mom will like to have it.

Kyle and his mom.  These are some extras that I decided to process just to have the extra choices.

They look so much alike.  Kyle--This is what you will look like when you're 42!!!

I haven't heard yet how the rest of the night went for the kids, but I'm sure "it was fine."  Haha.

Learning session

For me, one of the most difficult things to do is shoot good night images.  I went to Peoria, IL for a CLE seminar on Thursday and the hotel was on the river.  So, I thought I would give it another try.  Of course, most of the images sucked and just didn't turn out how I wanted at all.  I ended up frustrated.  I've since learned that I had the fstop wide open and that was the problem.  I should have stopped it WAY down and then I could have controlled the lighting issues that I was having.  Now I know....I'll write that note down in my notebook.  Hopefully, next time I'll do better!  Here's the result anyway after some creative editing in LR.

With this first one, I just sharpened everything:

With this second one, I cooled down the entire image a lot and sharpened the images.  The biggest issue I was having with this image is that I have these crazy light reflections in the sky.  I spent a great deal of time correcting those spots and removing them from the image.  I was able to remove them from the first one and the third one without so much trouble.  But, this second one really gave me problems.  I'm sure it was because I cooled it down so much and really worked on sharpening everything with high contrast.  Live and learn....that's what this is all about.

This last image I put a rosey hue on it.  I think this one is my favorite and what I feel is the most acceptable of the images.

This image was a real pain in the ass and I probably shouldn't even include it.  The left side of the image is more blurred and you can tell that it was windy outside.  Again, I should have had the shutter open to f16 or somewhere around there and then let the shutter open for 30 seconds in order to have this turn out better.  But, it's all about learning.

This image is from the next morning.  It was a cloudy, rainy, grey day.  It was pretty difficult to find any kind of character in the images.

Like I said, it was a grey day.  I think this edit of the image relays the true feeling of what that morning was like.

This is just playing with different editing--this is a matte finish with some vignetting.

This is a more artsy edit adding this overall blue hue to it.  Just for fun.

I wish my friend, Tina, would have been with me correcting my mistakes as I was shooting.  But, I was able to consult with her later and find out what I did wrong.  Now, I just need to get out and practice some more!  I can say that I really prefer to get the images damn near perfect in camera because editing is just not a lot of fun for me.  When I had a black and white darkroom, I loved developing my film.  However, this is different and not nearly as much fun.