Cable Family Update

One of my favorite families are the Cables.  For over 12 years they have commissioned me to create a theme family portrait with costumes for their Christmas cards.  They were my initial blog entry at the inception. Many people have commented on what a fun family they are.   It is time for an update.  They have 3 grand children now so the themes have become more kid oriented.  Here they are for your viewing pleasure.  I present the latest in the Cable family Christmas portrait saga.

Enjoy! 

A Family of Over 90 People in July!

Wow!

What do I do when it is 115 degrees outside and I have only one chance to get a family of over 90 people together for an epic family portrait?

The answer is a studio shoot on a green screen but my studio will only hold about 30 people at a time.  I decided to photograph them in three separate groups with posed edges that would fit together into one big..BIG…group.  I have never done anything like this before and I was not sure exactly how it would work but in theory it was all good so I went for it.

6:00 pm came and people began poring in. Suburbans, Vans and various Suv’s.  There were so many people and scores of little kids and babies.  The noise level was through the roof and I began to wonder what I had been thinking. 

Gradually I began sorting out the groups and bringing them into the camera room.  Fortunately they all came color coded by family. The first group was the center section and I posed edges that could be added on to.  The second group was the left and then the third group was the right side. I was asked not to line everyone up but to make the group a little more random.  Nice Challenge!

The shoot took two hours.  I cranked up my most animated self.  We played Simon says and yelled out loud and made funny faces and whispered and sang goofy songs… In the end I won the little kids over but I’m sure the adults thought I had lost it. The last group had the oldest kids so things began to calm down.

After about 5 hours of image revue and choosing the best expressions of every person from over 400 images, I formed 3 composite groups with everyone looking fabulous.  With the families approval, I took the whole project to my amazing retoucher and said…”SURPRISE!”   She put all the faces together, retouched everyone and then gave me back the images for the green screen drops.

 

I sent her back the images with transparent backgrounds and she began the process of making it all look realistic.  She extended a photograph I had taken of the water fall at Val Vista Lakes and created more water and more grass. After some perspective control and proportion adjustments, she matched up color, saturation and densities to create the amazing final image you see here. The final Portrait is 6 feet wide.

The great blessing of digital is that I can do anything.  The great curse of digital is that I can do anything.  This project start to finish took a combined time of 23 hours but the results are worth it.  This is a very special portrait of a very special family that will most likely never happen again!

February Blog!

Photography Classes?

Photography classes are going great.  We are just finishing up wednesday and Thursday night classes and the new Saturday morning class is headed for session 3 of 7 sessions this week.

The feed back has been great.  One student told me that she had viewed many online training videos and she had asked lots of questions of photographers and finally in this class, she gets it!  That is my guarantee!

We are starting new Wed & Thurs classes. The time will be 6:.30 till 8:30 pm- Classes will commence as soon as enough students agree on a start date.  If you have been thinking about it then get some friends and call.  We will do a class with as little as 4 and not more than 8 students.  If you and some friends have week days free, we will start a weekday morning class.  We would meet once a week from 8:00 to 10:00 am for 7 weeks.  Talk it over and let me know.  It's fun. You get about two years of college level photography in 14 hours.  All the info and none of the nonsense. 

Please enjoy this new portrait taken at Papago Park.  The Sunset was stunning.

New Year......New Resoves!

This year I resolve to make Blog entries at least once a month!

This is January so I am 100% so far this year.

It is time to revisit the Cable family.  True to form they have been as creative as ever with their Christmas portrait ideas.  Please enjoy the last two years.

Even Grandma got in the act this year.  They never tell me what the theme will be and it is allways a great surprise!

The Family Portrait

A family portrait by Brandt will be one of those definitive images that will celebrate who you are as a family.

Proudly and Prominently displayed in your home, a Family Portrait by Brandt conveys a powerful message that your family matters and that your children are part of something wonderful. 

At Brandt Photography, we have perfected the art of the Family Group Portrait. Digital technology has made it possible to switch heads between poses to create perfect expressions on everyone. Even missing people can be photographed at a separate time and placed into the final composition. 

Amazing as all this is, nothing can replace careful planning and control of color, contrast, texture, location, lighting, and composition.  Add to this, small children and large group management skills perfected  by years of study and experience, and you have an Artistic Family Portrait Statement created by Brandt.

Traditionally, only the wealthy could afford to commission a painter to create a family portrait. Clothing, location, the pose and beautiful lighting were carefully selected to feature the family  at their very very best. 

The advent of photography brought family portraits  to everyone.  The early photographers were, indeed, painters who embraced this new technology.  The result was that some of the best photographs ever taken were images made in the 1800 and early 1900's.

As the technology improved,  everyone could make snapshots.  Today, with smart-phones doubling as pretty decent cameras,  images are easily made by the millions.  While these pictures are can be fun and spontaneous,  the intrinsic  artistic beauty of a carefully planned,  gorgeously lit and professionally executed family portrait cannot be denied.   

Miracle of Digital

 THE MIRACLE OF DIGITAL

A few of months ago.  An extended family of about 25 people showed up for their scheduled appointment but announced that one couple and one family of 9 could not make it into town for the portrait session. Yikes!  What to do?

What I did was to photograph the group that was there and then  pose 9 people from the group into  the positions  that the missing people would have been in. All this was done in the studio on artificial turf with a Green Screen Wall.

I then contacted a photographer in Florida and another one is Las Vegas and asked them to photograph the missing people in the positions and with the same lens, angle and lighting ratios that I had used. I sent them the following illustration.

Once the new images were sent back to me I proceeded to put it all together.  I think you will agree, the results are. . . . . . . 

                                                
                          SPECTACULAR

Blog... Blog...What the @#*%$@! is a blog?

Now that I finally figured out what a blog is..I just had to have one. This is great. I can talk to the world about photography !

( Blog means Web Log. Say it fast and you get We Blog or Blog)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I will try to speak mostly with images. I can think of no better way to launch this blog than with a celebration of my most creative and daring clients, the Cable family. Normal, on any given day, a strange force overcomes them at Christmas. If you are lucky enough to be on their Christmas card list then you know what I mean. For the rest of you.....Enjoy: