family ford 5




I don't usually shoot family portraits. For what it costs to have me come out, you can buy your own gear (see the xmas guide) and shoot shoot shoot all year round. Plus you get the joy of learning photography which I think most people can do if they try. It's sort of like playing piano. If you grew up asian, you played piano AND something. Most of the creatives I know make records AND shoot pictures. The other plus of shooting your own pics is you get to re-shoot if someone has a bad hair day and your family is much more comfortable with you than a professional shooter. The camera can only shoot what's in front of it and the more relaxed the person is, the more relaxed the picture will be. This is important if you're prone to chandler face; that rictus of a grin that happens if you're not comfortable in front of the camera.

I think if you have kids, it's especially important to document them as they grow up, so maybe a digital rebel xt is the family xmas gift. You also never know when your kid will pick it up and launch a career. I didn't intend to shoot professionally and now I'm getting $2500 a shoot so a camera might end up being like college... but much much cheaper. Hmm... $600 digital rebel vs. $60,000 college......of course, it's important to have a stable day job. I have a day job. It's called producing/songwriting. eeek. I am an asian parents nightmare. My brother was telling me about a guy in denver who's shot some Time magazine covers and until recently his asian mother's understanding of his photography career was that he worked in a photomat somewhere.

While I don't shoot family portraits professionally, I do enjoy shooting my friends and If Steve wasn't my good friend, the fact that's he's been the marketing director for 500,000 Superchick records would probably be incentive enough. I really like this picture of Steve and kids because it captures each of their personalities with Steve playing the longsuffering Dad to a perfect T. It's not hard to achieve results like this; it's lit with one 4 foot umbrella and could probably be approximated with a white ceiling. All you have to do is bounce a flash off a white sheet and remove anything distracting in the background. I don't have any furniture yet, so that was as simple as putting the TV on the floor and flipping a couch around. Digital photography is great because you can blow through a lot of shots without spending money and get everyone relaxed enough to be themselves. Pick a color theme so people don't clash, enlist one of the girls to do makeup touchups and you're shooting family portraits.

Really, it's that easy.

BTW, for me it was piano AND french horn. The french horn thing didn't work out so well.

UPDATE: I was told it's actually around 520,000 records and Stand in the Rain is holding it's 9th week as #1 CHR song. woo hoo! BfP and BfP 1.1 combined have hit around 210,000 records. That's a lot for us!

The picture above is begging for a caption, so send em in... I'll post the funniest ones. I'm talking to you Dan Shike, mr. funnyman!

Posted: Wed - December 20, 2006 at 12:04 PM          

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