Twins Keep You Hopping

This Fall I was asked to photograph 2 high school seniors that are fraternal twins. Having working with identical twins, I was excited to photograph Jenny and Don. We had planned on an indoor session, as the weather was turning cold and cloudy. However, on the day of their Creative Session, temps. were in the 50's, some yellow foliage remained and the sun was out.

They were game when I suggested that we change course and head outside, so off to nearby Lake Park we went. Dad left us alone to work our magic together and right away the atmosphere was conducive to great images. Jenny and Don's personalities started to be show through; one being quiet; one quieter.

As I photograph, I'm always trying to do multiple things at once. One is keep my intuition open to changing light that I see and listen to that little voice that says, "try this." It's imperative that I try new things and follow that inner voice! It's never steered me wrong. The other side of my brain keeps a little banter going about all the technological considerations I need to make with my equipment: shutter speed, f-stop, lighting with wireless flashes, positioning, etc. and then blend that together with what I want to convey about the subject before me. So with two of them, I was working in overdrive.

My work must simply be true to the person I photograph. Their image has to blend the technical with the intuitive, so that I can convey something authentic about the person before me. When parents tell me that I've really captured their personalities, then I know that the multi-tasking during the Creative Session was worth it!

So enough about the 'how' of images of twins. Today, while I was working on this image of the two of them, a feeling inside me, an awareness of truth, started to well up and it landed as a well balanced weight within. This image was true to them, and then I remembered how Jenny gushed about this image when she saw it in the View and Choose session. Don, he just smiled and shook his head 'yes.'

It will now be a 24 x 16 Metallic print to hang in my Gallery. Every time I look at it, I'll feel that same weight in my belly that says, "true." I hope they do too!

"Honey, Look What's in Our Garden!"

Sometimes things come together when I just get out of my own way. Today was one of those days. Just back from my trip to Scotland and feeling refreshed, I had planned on photographing Delaney in the studio with one of my new, colorful backdrops. At one year of age, Delaney seemed to be more interested in my dogs that she had met when she arrived. I needed to follow my intuition and leave plan A behind. "Follow your gut" kicked in.

"Let's go outdoors," I suggested to Mom and Dad. At first nothing was really clicking, but when I let the dogs into the backyard to sniff around, Delaney became very interested in just watching them. So very quickly we put on the hat that she had earlier ejected off her head like a hot potato. Never before have my dogs been used as 'bait" for a toddler so when it resulted in images such as this, I think it's time to reconsider their employ on an individual basis.

When I brought this back on the LCD of the camera during the Creative Session, I knew it was destined for sharing. The title is just one of my crazy ways of looking at things. She appears to be coming up from the garden with the planned color harmony going on. She's just a little flower!