Sylvia and Lauren

At age twenty four, Sylvia gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She named her Lauren. She had a picture taken of her and her new daughter that she treasures to this day. Now that Lauren is twenty four years old, Sylvia wanted have another set of pictures taken. She hoped to incorporate that original baby photo somehow. This was a great opportunity for me to capture some images of a mother and daughter who obviously care for each other very much. I was confident these feelings would be apparent in the images; I just had to allow them to be themselves.

We started out with some simple shots just to get them used to me and the camera.

These are kind of out of order, but I wanted to jump to these ones first since they were Sylvia's main motivation for the session. The original photo is hung on the wall behind them. I lit Sylvia and Lauren so that the background (including the photo) would be in shadow. I then used a second snooted light to concentrate a beam of light on the photo to help it pop but still not overpower the main subjects.

After getting the above image, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Sylvia and Lauren are closer to the photograph enabling me to light both the subject and background evenly. I kept the snooted light on the photo and warmed it with an orange gel.

We played around for a little bit with dramatic lighting and some more serious expressions.

A nice closeup of mother and daughter.

The boys watched the World Series while they were "on deck." Sorry, I couldn't resist. Sylvia poses with her two children (Lauren and Reese) and her son-in-law David.

While I was there and the lights were set up we went ahead and shot several individuals and groups. Here Lauren and David share a silly moment. I get the feeling there are plenty of those with these two!

Lauren volunteered for a few individual shots. Thanks to Reese and David for assiting with this. David was holding the hair light up high and Reese was manning the reflector.

I had a great time with Sylvia and her family. I hope we accomplished what she had envisioned an then some! And I bet she never thought her back room could double as a photo studio!