Its a well known fact that I am NOT a portrait photographer. Its just not my thing or my specialty and I will be the first to admit that there are way better people out there to do your wedding, baby shoot, family portrait- whatever involving humans. Sometimes I wonder if I am not good at portraits because I hate them or if I hate them because I am not good at them. What came first the chicken or the egg? Either way I have no problem admitting my faults in this area of my life. I give so much respect to portrait photographers because their job is infinitely more difficult than any other photographers’. Portraiture is not only about composition and lighting, but you also have wild cards which are the very much alive and constantly moving, breathing, and blinking subjects. Throwing kids into the mix? Screw it, better say your prayers.
Out of the many and many photos I snapped of my godson and his family up at Apple Hill a couple weekends ago, the only ones that were acceptable were the ones of the adults. I wasn’t really trying to do portraits, I was really just there to help my best friend get an acceptable shot for her annual Christmas card portrait and I was vlogging the whole trip. I didn’t even bring my cameras (big mistake). Luckily for me my vlog camera, a Canon PowerShot ELPH 340 HS, has some fun settings (Toy Camera Effect, and Tilt Shift aka Miniatures Effect). For the record I am very much against copping out of taking real honest to god photographs and overusing filters or heavily photo-shopping your work. But if you aren’t doing it seriously or proclaiming it as art- I am totally fine with that. Anyway, I was able to snag a couple photos I liked using these in-camera filter settings which were fun to mess around with.
The Toy Camera Effect gave the photos a really strong vignette, a cool hue, and some minor blurring. The Miniatures Effect aims to achieve that tilt-shift effect everyone so loves that creates the illusion that regular sized objects on the horizon are miniature. In reality its an in-camera digital filter that just blurs out the top and bottom very heavily- but it was still pretty fun to play around with especially considering when I actually use my real cameras to shoot I always play with the depth of focus, sometimes annoyingly so.
Long story short, I ended up with a couple of fun photos and I hope you like them too.
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