The Steve Z Photography Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about unique ways to get family portraits outside. Just having clients stand in front of the mountains can be a little limiting creatively. It can also be difficult to get young ones to cooperate at exactly the right time. I find that making an adventure out of the photo shoot is a great way to make kids thing the photo shoot is just one big game. Which it really is!

So for this shoot we hauled the family couch out through the backyard and set it smack dab in the middle of a Boulder County biking/hiking trail outside the clients’ Gunbarrel home. The kids brought out a few props of their own, including a great yellow pool chair.

I was testing out my new RadioPopper flash units today. Unfortunately there appears to be some issues with the firmware. Fortunately they worked well enough that I still got some cool shots. I started off with some shots of the parents while I was getting things set up.

After that we got everyone on the couch and let them interact. I shoot for a blend between the posed shots and moments captured in a photojournalist style.

The little boy’s attention span for photography was not very long, so I was happy to be able to get these shots!

But after the brother/sister together shots, I had a really fun time shooting creative shots with the daughter in the bright yellow chair. Fun! I love the attitude of the young model that she is throwing around.

That’s all for another blog entry here. I’m back at a wedding today, see you next time.

In a perfect world all my clients will come into the cozy studio, hang out on the couches, and enjoy a beverage while flipping through my selection of albums.  Web images are clearly no substitue for looking and touching the real thing.  However, I’m providing an online guide for my out of town clients, to help sort through the album selection process.

For 2009, I will be offering 4 different types of photo albums.  My intent is surely not to make things complicated; I just can’t limit my choices, because they are all so cool!  Well that and some offer price point savings that will appreciated by some.   Each album or book offers different covers, features, page styles, and price points.

Click on the ” Read more” to the right to view all the detailed pictures and descriptions.  Thanks!  Steve Z . . . . . (more…)

The difficult part about this time of year is it’s too easy to tell when I’m behind on my blogging!  In the summer I can get away with it . . . so lets just pretend it’s warm and sunny with pretty fall colors, and not negative 5 billion, OK?

About a month ago my girlfriend was house sitting for her parents.  Since all of their children are grown up and out of the house, the plethora of fallen leaves in their backyard were untouched.  When I saw the beautiful back yard full of leaves, I knew that I needed to do an impromptu shoot. I had seen pictures of my friend Issac’s boy on the old camera phone during some of our mountain bike adventures, and knew that he would be just the candidate!

I did quite a bit of racking and surprised Isaac, Erin and Logan with a gigantic pile of leaves. In fact, I was a bit over-zealous.  I thought that I remembered Logan to be 4 years old . . .  WRONG!   As it turns out he’s two and change, and the leaf pile was taller than he was!  I think in this next shot he look like a little stuffed animal, almost too cute to be real!

Another reason that the yard is such an epic location, they have an old car buried in the trees.  I’m for sure going to have to do another shoot with it in the future.

Christmas card photo!  Oh shoot, did I ruin the surprise?

For the record, I also predict young Logan will grow to be an awesome mountain biker, just like his dad. Never hurts to plant the seed early on! Check out Logan’s 2 wheeler!  Pure Boulder child, 300 dollar German wood bike!

At this point in time, I’m really starting to wonder if Logan isn’t some sort of reincarnated movie star.  How does he know to work the camera like that?

“Hello, North Face?  Yes, this is Steve Z, world famous child modeling agent.  I have a boy here who you have to check out . . . ”