Thursday, December 4, 2014

Warm Up Your Winter Portraits


Quick.  Imagine a wedding portrait.  Those shots taken between the ceremony and before the reception.

Did you picture the bridge and groom standing in a garden with colorful flowers?  A gazebo?  Most of us do because that’s what most of us are programmed to think makes a good portrait – a colorful and warm background.

Truth is, you can have unique pictures at any time of the year and the richness of your imagery doesn’t have to come from flowers.  Winter is a great time to find just the right light and composition to make your loved ones look their best in a formal portrait.

This is Connecticut so you’ll need to be flexible on timing.  However, you won’t have to wait long for the weather to go from warm to cold to wet to dry.  Nor will you have to drive far to find the background you want.  How about a waterfall with icy edges leftover from one of those cold nights, while the afternoon sun is warming up the park to a seemingly impossible 60 degrees?  Drop the coats off on an unused picnic table and shoot!

Do you have a favorite site where you’d like to pose your family?  Maybe an historic building such as the Mark Twain House?  Sure, landscaping can be great for background but, if you pose yourselves in the right way and put the emphasis on the manmade portions of the scene, the lack of greenery may offer you just the composition you need, making the family portrait sharper and cleaner.  After all, the whole point of a portrait is not to see leaves but to see faces.

One of the advantages of a formal family portrait in winter is the need to be quick about it.  You can plan for some hot chocolate after the pictures are done but there is a sense of motivation if your portrait subjects want to put their coats back on.

There can also be a sense of fun and adventure in finding a new spot, something different for the annual ritual of lining up the loved ones to share pictures with family and friends.  By getting the level of excitement up, you can increase the likelihood of beaming expressions on your subjects.

You will also love the rosy cheeks!
If you want more tips on how to take a good winter family portrait, give us a call at Premier Portraits Studio.  We’ll even tell you how we love the way any photo can be made black and white but winter shots really are crisp in that conversion.

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