My Family Photo

now let me first say this was spur of the moment thing! my sister called me from Florida tonight and requested a family photo and needed it by tomorrow morning! It is for our parents 40th wedding anniversary and my moms 75th birthday which is all in 2 weeks....

So at 10:00pm tonight I round up all the kids and demand they all cooperate for a family photo... I got 8 pictures taken and only one was ok to pass along... we were in no way prepared for a family photo, especially not myself! the younger boys were barely dressed, the older 3 I had to round up and get them to sit... it was entertaining to say the least! I had to set the E-1 up on a basket on the dining room table ( my smallest lens is the OM 50mm) round up some lamps to illuminate the room andtry as best as I could to kill shadows ( I dont have a flash)... I had to get the camera set in focus as best as I could while it sat on top of the basket, set the timer, press the button without moving the camera ( no remote lol) so after 8 shots this is what we ended up with... I figure what better picture for my parents then to see us as we actually are!
(that's what I am telling myself anyway)

So you have been warned in advance that this is in no way a formal portrait LOL but amazingly enough this is the first family photo we have done in 5 years... and we had only done 1 prior to this one!

from left to right...

Jenna, Jonathan, Joseph, Myself & baby Jack*belly , Nick, Jacob & Justin

ISO 800, f/1.8, 1/80, OM 50mm



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Alison

My daughter has 5 children and they were here for 8 days and I loved every minute of it! She has Shaela 15, Devin 13, Emerald 10, Owen 5, and Ella Mae 2. It looks very much like your family! Amy stays at home with the kids while her husband Greg works. Driving a school bus would be a great job for her too. I would go crazy! I love well behaved kids, a bus load of noisy rowdy ones would make me go nuts. LOL What are the ages of your Js ;o) Well not counting the tiny little Jack of course.
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S.Haden
http://www.pbase.com/shaden008

thought this might make you smile to see my grandkids. Amy had girl,boy,girl,boy,and girl. I had Amy and Casey (girl, boy) and then STOP lol ;o)) I glad she had 5, they're great fun.



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S.Haden
http://www.pbase.com/shaden008

Have you sent the photo off yet? I like it. The personalities of different folks show up nicely here. Because you had to use incandescent light, the whole thing has an orange cast. I've just sent an email to show you what the colors might look like if the white balance were corrected a bit. I think my quick PP is too pink, but it will give you another version of the shot to look at.

I'm so glad you are not going away! Good luck.
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Steve

The fact that you got them all to look at the camera in a sane fashion is amazing! When I try to take pics of my 2 kids in addition to my 4 nieces/nephews, they are always making faces, whining, etc etc. When I do get them all, they do a very nice job. I did get a few nice shots of them in the park a couple months ago

Thanks for sharing - good luck with Jack.
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Brian

are Justin 17, will be 18 in February... Jenna 13, Joseph 11, will be 12 next month,... Jacob 4, will be 5 in November, & Jonathan 2, will be 3 in November, and then Jack is due in December.

I hope you got loads of pictures when your grandkids were visiting
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Alison

And I just love that wee little one.... she looks so tiny compared to her bigger siblings
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Alison

that's a tough one.... the wall is actually orange and the color of it is acurate in the photo but maybe it cast the color onto us? on my monitor it looks fine? Hmmm....
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Alison

the other ones were pretty comical as each kid acted up in a photo LOL I think they had it planned out ahead of time! Even in the last one one of the kids is making a face LOL

Thanks for the comments
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Alison

Sometimes my wife pushes me to put the camera in the tripod, using the timer so I can show in the photo.

It must be tough to have that many kids to look at the camera and don't make faces....good job.

BTW in the other thread, I put the exif on each photo, and replied once again...

Take care

Carlos

I just tried again, this time getting a less pink effect. Of course, I haven' seen your walls!
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Steve

akrab said:

the other ones were pretty comical as each kid acted up in a photo
LOL I think they had it planned out ahead of time! Even in the last
one one of the kids is making a face LOL

Thanks for the comments

Click to expand...

I dunno, I tend to like family portraits where the kids are making faces and just acting like kids.

One question, are your walls that color? I suspect there may be somewhat of a whitebalance issue, as I tend to notice overly browns when shooting in available light. All digital cameras have trouble getting the WB correct indoors with auto mode under normal household lights. The E-1 is perhaps better than many of the other cameras, but it too has issues, and the colors come out a little brown-ish. You can either start thinking about using custom white balance, selecting a suitable pre-set for the WB, or fixing it in post processing. An alterntive is living with it, since mostly it is only us photo geeks that notice it, while most people focus on the actual people, and don't care as much for the color accuracy.

My problem with not using auto is I often forget to reset the WB back after I'm done, and I will go off and shoot a bunch of shots with the wrong custom WB.

maybe I should take a daytime picture with natural lighting to show that it is the color we like bold colors LOL our kitchen is jalepenio red LOL
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Alison

akrab said:

maybe I should take a daytime picture with natural lighting to show
that it is the color we like bold colors LOL our kitchen is
jalepenio red LOL

Click to expand...

No problem. I just wanted to make sure you were rendering the colors true to life.

Shirley sent me an edit that preserved the wall color and fixed our coloring and THEN I saw that the balance was off
Thank you for pointing it out
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Alison

akrab said:

Shirley sent me an edit that preserved the wall color and fixed our
coloring and THEN I saw that the balance was off
Thank you for pointing it out

Click to expand...

Its funny. I am slightly blue-green color blind (which is evidently common in males), but I tend to be more sensitive to WB problems, particularly with skin tone.

Beautiful family but it makes me wonder...

Are you trying for a baseball team? LOL
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Your Critique and Comments are always appreciated as they help me learn. Thank you!
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KimR

I was done after 3 LOL just shows we dont make our own plans really...... though, we think we do
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Alison

Guess you haven't figured out what makes them or when you are not shooting pictures for fun you have found something else to occupy your time.

Glad to see you are still shooting GREAT pictures. It was nice to see all the family together.

errrrrrr or in our case 6 times LOL

seriously though.... after this one there will be some permanent measures done... I love my kids and I love having them but we are not in a position to continue having them... and I am not getting any younger
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Alison