House on a Hill Blog... : Second Annual Gerding Family Photos...

I have been thinking about something this morning... and I could be wrong because I have not quite finished my second cup of coffee... but, I believe that the beautiful family that I had the privilege of photographing this last weekend was my first REPEAT family in my short professional photography career. (not counting my own family of course) The Gerding Family was really one of my first families that I photographed when I starting pursuing this small business of mine starting October 2011. So, thank you Gerding Family for being my first faithful family customers! :)
It was an absolutely gorgeous Saturday morning in downtown OKC. I arrived early about 9 am for our 9:30 am shoot because I was curious if they were going to have the "Festival of the Arts" tents set up already... We were shooting on the grounds of the Myriad Gardens, so I needed to make sure that none of those ugly vinyl tents were going to be in my backgrounds. (Don't get me wrong, if I were doing a circus themed shoot those tents would have been AMAZING! note to self: schedule a circus themed shoot in downtown next year around the end of April) Anyways, all of my locations for the shoot were tent free and so with 15 minutes to spare before my shoot I proceeded to test some lighting and my... DRUMROLL.... AMAZING NEW 1.8 LENS!
In a nutshell the 1.8 lens is... utterly amazing. It allow me to focus on a certain spot in closer detail... For example... If you look very closely and zoom in on my closeups, with the 1.8 lens, you can see me in my subjects eye ball! I know! It is almost so amazing it is creepy! But cool! Alright, from my use of now about 10 exclamation points you know how excited I am about this new piece of equipment, so I will be done talking about it, for now ;) Back to talking about this wonderful Gerding family.
The Gerding family has a 3 year old boy and turning 1 this week baby girl. And those two siblings have the most wonderful pair of eyes you have ever seen. They are blue eyes, but the blue has so many hints of white and light running through them that they just make for some amazing images. Because their eyes have so much contrast to them, when I make their images black and white, their eyes almost have even more of an impact. They make making beautiful images pretty easy to say the least. THEN I get a few close ups of mom and dad, and I can see clearly where those kiddos got those beautiful eyes.
We ended our shoot with a trip to "Pinkitzel" a local cupcakery in downtown. We wanted to get some shots of the soon to be one year old enjoying herself with a birthday cupcake. And Oh did she ever enjoy herself. Her little smirk on her face when that mound of sugary goodness was set before her was priceless. I want to give a shout out to Pinkitzel as well for being SO accommodating to us. I got to the cupcakery and talked with them about what I wanted to do with my clients and they were more than willing to let us shoot in the store and even gave us permission to use one of the beautifully set up party rooms! Your kindness is well noted Pinkitzel. Well noted.
Over all the morning ended with some amazing moments being captured with my camera. Some that this family will be able to treasure forever. Thank you faithful Gerding Family! The pleasure was all mine! I leave you of course with some of my personal favorites from the day...