Family Photo Shoot

Our good friends met us at the school behind our house for a family photo shoot. We had a gorgeous, sunny day to take pictures. We took turns taking pictures of each other's family and ended up with a LOT of photos. A few turned out well, many did not. There were some lessons learned, but over all it was a good experience.

I know that a lot of what the professional photographers do to make their photos look, well, "professional," is in the editing. Since I have a snazzy professional software package to play with, I did some editing of my own.

Here are some before and afters:

A little cropping, brightening, sharpening, leveling, etc. goes a long way!

I think we will try this again in the spring. Some of our lessons learned were:

1. Time of day. We had time restraints due to evening activities, so we had to shoot in early afternoon and deal with some sharp shadows on faces. Next time we'll come at dusk.
2. Photographer. We had two cameras going at the same time. Next time, we'll have the more experienced photographer take pictures, and the other parent focus on getting kids to smile and watch out for weird hands, straight clothes and getting kids to smile. Did I mention we need to make sure the kids are smiling? :)
3. Wind. It was windy. A lot of good shots were ruined by hair flying into faces.