anna elliott photography || baltimore bar & bat mitzvah photography » child

portrait photography workshop

kristin — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:39:54 +0000

it’s official: i’m offering my first workshop to teach folks how to take better photos of their kids. check out all the information HERE.

colorado jen

kristin — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:47:32 +0000

jen and her family moved from colorado to our neighborhood last summer and she instantly became known as colorado jen (to distinguish her from several other jens in the neighborhood). the name stuck even though they’ve been here over a year and i was thrilled when she emailed me to see if i was available for a session with her family. she has four beautiful kids and jen, herself, looks like she should be in an ad promoting some sort of healthy, natural product (“you, too, can look this beautiful after having four kids if you buy our product!”).

i met up with jen, her husband, dave, and their four kids: noah, luke, georgia and grace. luke is the same age as my daughter and they were in the same class last year and my son is the same age as georgia. he’s had a mad crush on her since he met her but i found out yesterday that her heart now belongs to another boy in her class.

we had a great time yesterday. after days of torrential rains, the weather was literally picture perfect and jen and dave were relaxed so the kids were free to just be themselves. i could photograph them every weekend and never grow tired of them.

the last of the flash (for now…)

kristin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:35:57 +0000

emilee was my last off-camera flash guinea pig and she was fantastic. i’ve been photographing her and her family for a few years now and i’ve always meant to have her come model for me. she has a serenity and calmness about her that comes across in photos and i’m going to be using one of these photos (don’t know which one, yet) as a sample in my studio. thanks, emilee!

sydney and gabe off flash

kristin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:55:39 +0000

i told you i had a bunch to post from my off camera flash practice sessions (really, i only have 1 more session to post. hang in there). this is sydney and her little brother gabe (who makes a cameo appearance due to his mother’s pleading). gabe and jack were in the same preschool class last year and were pretty much joined at the hip. we don’t see him as much; it was nice to be able to take photos of sydney while the two of them played. sydney was a terrific model – except for when i told her to look serious and she burst out laughing. thanks, sydney

sarah and alex v.2

kristin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:44:48 +0000

sarah and alex were my very first clients back in march of 2006 when i needed to do some portfolio building. their mom, amy, was a friend of a friend and – as we soon found out – used to work with jeff at the first agency he worked at out of college. fast forward 4 years and alex and sarah are practically grown up. i see amy around town a lot but rarely see the girls so it was such a shock to see that they weren’t little kids anymore.

the first four photos are sarah and alex from way back when and the remainder or from our shoot a couple of weeks ago:

practice makes perfect (or at least progress)

kristin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:15:33 +0000

judi brought her three kids over to my house a few days ago to be my flash guinea pigs. jake and bernie were great but it was little esther who killed me. i love her impish smiles in the photos – i only just met her but i’m pretty sure these capture her spirit:

jumpin jack flash

kristin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:40:18 +0000

are you sick of the flash practice photos, yet? i’ve got a bunch more coming so….

this is my son, jack. jack-jack, jack attack, JACK (said through clenched teeth), goofball and silly willy nilly. he’s the universe’s way of teaching me patience…5 years down, 13 more to go.

clearly these photos are not creative and even reek slightly of a session from olan mills. i wasn’t concerned so much with the composition and posing as i was with trying to get the amount of light where i wanted it to fall. some shots worked, some didn’t. clearly in the rim lights one i need to move the light back because i didn’t get the rim light all the way around (it’s missing around his jaw). but i continue to plug away and am determined to learn this. i have a few more sessions this week and even two sessions i’ve already done and need to post.

more practice

kristin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:14:24 +0000

i asked some friends to volunteer their older kids so that i could practice my off camera flash skills. today it was matthew, aaron and jeremy (side note: i’m getting to photograph matthew’s bar mitzvah on the 17th. can’t wait).

i culled a few that caught my eye but clearly i have a way to go toward mastering this stupid flash thing. i haven’t been this frustrated since i was 6 and learned to ride my bike: i hated falling off but i wanted to be able to do it so i kept at it. i’ll never be zack arias or david hobby but maybe i can not be a total idiot when it comes to flash.

improving my flash skills

kristin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:15:03 +0000

i’ve been bumbling around with off-camera flash for a while now but it has been more wild guesses and lucky hits to get the correct exposure. i could usually get what i needed but i didn’t know how i was doing it. until i got the One Light DVD from zack arias. i’ve tried lots of other methods of learning about flash; it seems everyone has a workshop or a video or an online tutorial and i’ve paid for and used just about all of them. i’ve read books and manuals. still wasn’t exactly sure what i was doing. i decided to suck it up and spend the money on zack’s DVD because i couldn’t find a single review online that said it wasn’t worth it or it was a waste of time. not a single one.

and now i know why. it makes sense that photographers are visual people, right? so why have i been trying to read about flash instead of seeing someone explain it and show it in action? zack does just that. and he’s so good at what he does that i now understand the inverse square law of light. if you don’t know what it is, google it and then tell me zack isn’t a genius for being able to explain it to lame-os like me.

if you’re my friend on facebook, you’ve already seen this photo but for the rest of you here is my first attempt at using off-camera flash after watching the DVD. i’ve still got a ton to learn but at least now i know what to study:

every now and then

kristin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:00:01 +0000

occasionally i’m able to get a photograph of one of my kids without them smiling with all their teeth showing or without them frowning at me. it’s a professional hazard – the kids are sick of the camera and few of the tricks i use on my clients’ kids work on my own.

but yesterday jeff and i took the kids to the playground and for the first time in a while i brought along my camera. i wasn’t expecting much, if anything. i knew the kids wanted to run around instead of having their photos taken and it was 11:30am with bright sun and no clouds. ideal for playing outside but not for photographs.

i took a few photos and then sat on the bench with jeff while we watched kate and jack run around like apes. i downloaded the card when we got home, fully expecting to delete all of the images.

but this one caught my eye. and my breath. it won’t mean anything to you, but to me it *is* kate. the freckles on her cheeks…her hair a mess…the direct gaze without the cheesy smile. just a quick glimpse of her. it’s shots like these that keep me picking up my camera for more.