Family photography gift vouchers are a great gift idea. It’s the gift that keeps on giving! It’s an opportunity to get the family together and to have them professionally photographed either in the studio or on location in a fun filled relaxed manner, thus bringing out the character of the individual and family as a whole.

In this case Karen decided to use her family photography gift voucher over Christmas holidays when all of the family members had come home. That’s the great thing about our gift vouchers, they are valid for 12  months from the date of purchase.

Karen and I liaised about a week out from the shoot to confirm the location, day and the time of the shoot, we are very flexible regarding arranging shoots especially outdoor shoots. (I could mention the Melbourne weather but I wont).

We decided to meet at Mills beach in Mornington at 8:30 am before it became too hot and the light too harsh. Karen was looking for a beach shoot and I recommended this beach as on the day I knew it would be protected from the weather, provide a wide range of backgrounds and some shade.

When and Where?

Carlie and Scott bought a Family Photography Gift voucher last year, they gave me a call late January 2020 to organise a shoot, the first thing we chatted about was a location and time. I gave them several options as I know the area well, they decided they were looking for parklands or gardens to use for their professional family photographs.

The timing of a shoot is important, any professional photographer will tell you that they do not like strong sunlight for portrait photography, it creates heavy shadows and depending on the time of the year will wash out the colours in the photographs.

Another consideration is the age of the children, when are they at their best? As a parent I already know that most youngsters are better prepared for photographs first thing in the day rather than late in the day.

In the end we settled to meet at Sea Winds park at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, we knew the kids would be at their best and for me I knew the light would be still soft and the shadows reasonably long. The long shadows would enable me to place my subjects in the shadows and out of the sun.

There are a lot of things that have to come together to create beautiful portraits and on the technical side lighting is one of the key things. Try it next time you are taking a photograph, if there’s an opportunity to move your subjects out of the strong sunlight you’ll be amazed by the difference.

Connection with your subjects is another key aspect to great family photography, if you’re not having fun and getting along with your photographer then that is going to come across in the photographs. I’ve been working professionally for 19 years and I’m raising my own children so I know how to get adults and kids to relax and have a great time and this comes across in the photographs.

Different looks

The family photography gift vouchers give you 1 hours worth of photography, this gave us plenty of time to move through the park using different backgrounds and features as well as different lenses, this gives my clients a greater range of different looking photographs to choose from.

It’s always important to take photographs orientated differently so that the client as different options when deciding where or how to use prints, So I’ll always give my clients a range of landscape and portrait orientated images.

Post Production

:Basic Editing. During the professional photography shoot I will take a lot of photographs this is done partly to allow for the blinkers, I’ll always have someone say “every photo I’m in I’m blinking” our high end cameras allow us to take a burst of photographs each time this takes care of “the blink”. Part of our job in post production is to work through all of these and delete the images that either don’t quite work or are too similar to other images. No one needs an overwhelming number of images to sort through, so we take care of that for you.

:Individual exposure adjustments. Shooting on location family photography always has its challenges with mixed lighting sources, shadows or harsh lighting. During post production I will take the time and make the effort to balance out exposures by lighting shadow and dimming down highlights.

:Cropping. Images can be cropped creatively to add extra impact. With my experienced  eye I will select images and perform creative cropping, delivering extra image so that our clients have lots of choices.

:That Creative Touch. When editing images I know that certain images can be brought up to the next level with a little extra processing into black and whites or with .other techniques that I can use. A range on individual images are chosen and given that additional treatment. More info about these techniques can be found HERE

Delivery

Daryl Gordon Photography delivers images via Dropbox with 7 days of the initial shoot

All images are kept on our drop box account free of charge for 12 months. This makes it easy to share image files with third parties or provides added security in case your back-up fails.

For more information about our Family Photography Packages Click HERE

Fore more information about Family Photography Gift Vouchers Click HERE

Or hit us up through our contact info below.-Daryl Gordon