Our favorite lab is sponsoring the most amazing portrait contest.  The Grand Prize is $5,000 cold hard cash and all awards go to the families of the winning portrait!

All sessions between January 1st and June 21st 2010 are eligible for entry.  We’ll ask you during your shoot if you’re interested in participating.  We’ll also be holding special mini sessions between now and the entry deadline so stay tuned!

Miller’s 2010 Baby & Child Contest Guidelines

Miller’s 2010 Baby & Child Contest will be held online, allowing you to help determine the winners by voting for your favorite portraits.

Categories for this year’s contest include: Color, Black & White/Sepia, Special Needs, and Humorous. The online contest will consist of four different qualifying rounds and one final round. Each round will last for one month. Blackburn Studio will be able to post entries during the first three weeks of every qualifying month and vote during the last week of the month. Posting and voting deadlines are listed:

• Round 1 (March): Post Entries – March 1 – 21. Vote on Entries – March 22 – 31.
• Round 2 (April): Post Entries – April 1 – 21. Vote on Entries – April 22 – 30.
• Round 3 (May): Post Entries – May 1 – 21. Vote on Entries – May 22 – 31.
• Round 4 (June): Post Entries – June 1 – 21. Vote on Entries – June 22 – 30.

For each qualifying round, the top five winners will be selected from the four categories and will receive a studio sample of their winning image. These winning portraits will be entered into the Final Round, which takes place during the month of July. The Final Round will be judged online by a panel of esteemed photographers. First, Second, and Third places, as well as two Honorable Mentions, will be announced for each category! Cash prizes for these winners include $2,000 for First, $1,000 for Second, $750 for Third, and $500 for each Honorable Mention. One portrait from the Final Round will also receive the highest of accolades — Grand Prize Winner. The cash prize will be $5,000 for this lucky winner! All cash prizes will be given to the families of the winning portraits.

Miller’s Baby & Child Contest Rules

• All portraits taken January 1- June 21, 2010 are eligible for entry into the 2010 Baby & Child Contest.
• Voters will have the ability to flag any image they feel does not meet the guidelines of the contest. Flagged images will be reviewed prior to the announcement of round winners to ensure the winning images do meet contest standards.
• Participants may post one image per child from each photography session. Miller’s reserves the right to delete multiple submissions from one session.
• Participants are not limited on the amount of images they can post.
• It is the responsibility of the participant to format pictures correctly and according to the category prior to posting the image. Miller’s will not reformat images once submitted and reserves the right to delete any submission that fails to meet these requirements.
• Miller’s reserves the right to delete any submission that is inappropriate in nature.
• Miller’s will not use any participants’ images without prior consent.
• We ask that all images remain anonymous. Please refrain from placing studio logos or text on any images.
• Children age 12 and under can be entered into the contest.
• Maternity shots do not fall within any of the available categories.

Strobe Negatives:

• More equipment needed. [Strobes, Light Stands, Battery/Battery Pack, Umbrellas, Reflectors, Gels, Books]
• More Technical Knowledge which takes time to learn and perfect.  [I'm still learning!]
• Slow moving on a shoot & the need to stage shoots.

Natural Light Negatives:

• Usually constrained to shadowy areas to control light.
• Need to overexpose
• Raccoon Eyes
• Slower shutter speeds
• Lower depth of field [also good!]
• Higher ISO [equals more noise in image]

Strobe Positives:

• Shoot anywhere, anytime.
• More dynamic look to images
• No raccoon eyes!
• Able to more easily obtain correct overall image exposure.  [i.e. not over exposing sky/background/ambient to gain correctly exposed face.]
• Able to add dramatic color to images w/Gels.
• Ability to shoot at higher shutter speeds.
• Lower ISO

Natural Light Positives:

• Bokeh!  [Blurring of the background]
• Speed of movement.  You’re able to keep pace with your subject no matter what they’re doing.
• Less Gear!  But can be more expensive if you invest in great lenses.
• You see the world as the sun [or the natural eye] interprets it.

The above lists were only for shooting not post processing.  Below I’ll go over some post processing issues in each type of scenario.

Right now when I view a lot of local photographers work I always see overexposed faces with lots of blacks added, and heavy saturation.  Some people take it a step further and smooth the skin on the face to much which makes them look plastic.  These photographers are booking, so there is a market for it!  However when I see this type of photography I only see an unskilled photographer in dealing with lighting, or a lazy one.  Of course this is my opinion.

Raccoon Eyes:

The top image is the original picture taken, while the below is over exposing the image by 1 stop.  While this helps bring in their features their eyes are still shadowed.  With this image there isn’t much you can do with it unless you spend 30min-1hour in photoshop dodging out the shadows.  Some might just take this a step further to “save” the image and go one more stop with overexposure.

At this point we’ve lost the detail of their clothing, their faces, and we still have raccoon eyes.  I’ve also had to tweak the black levels, the recovery, and desaturated it a bit because the red tones in the skin become to intense.  Also with more overexposure comes less detail, more noise, and more blur.

Now for a picture with flash vs. natural light.  I know I said it wasn’t this, but I want to illustrate a point.

The first image was taken without a flash, the second with a flash, and the third without a flash with exposure adjustments.

Now we can see what’s happening up close.  The first image was taken with the flash with no photoshop adjustments.  The second was taken without a flash +1 stop exposure, pumping the black in order to bring back some color, and desaturating the reds to compensate for over exposure.  Note with the image on the right the clarity is not good, there is a lot of noise [as if I took the picture with a point and shoot.], and the eyes are still dark.  The image on the right, you can see the brown in his eyes, there is no noise, and the image is nice and sharp.

This also translates in the ability to print large prints past 8×10 as well.  The image on the right would not look good at all in a larger size.  However the image on the right can be printed as large as the customer wants it.

Below is the same scenario.  Can you guess which is which?

Below I’m attempting to clean up the noise, the blur, and bring out the eyes.  Its really hard!

Ok only one more to go.  This is an example of why over exposure doesn’t translate in all situations.  People with darker skin tones … they just can’t be treated with the over exposed look, it just doesn’t look good.

While the effect looks better on the lighter skinned girl, the darker skinned girl starts to look bad even at +1 stop of over exposure.  Her great brown tones turn red and her mouth goes wonky.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.

I’m not going to now go on a tirade on how strobes are better than natural light.  I shoot in both styles.  I only wanted to illustrate that a great photographer is not a one trick pony, but can pull many things out of their bag.  The real test is to know when to pull what out of your bag, and when to leave other things in.

Am I afraid to come out of the shadows?  Not a chance.

More photos available at my Salt Lake Family Photography website

More photos available at my Salt Lake Portrait Photography website.

From in the stack, to out in the lobby, no matter where they stood everyone thought there was a celebrity shoot happening.  They love each other and it shows.  Girl it up Cameron!

More photos available at my Salt Lake Family Photography website.