I’ve always enjoyed doing something a little different with snapshots – it’s such an oddity to me to have people standing, staring into the camera, in front of some spectacle.  It’s this odd detachment of ‘here I am’ yet I’m not looking or interacting with the space I’m in – instead, I’m staring back at you, the viewer, who is god only knows where, staring back at me, in front of this scene, staring oddly back.

And so, I’ve always preferred the more natural, casual photo; taken while the subjects are still interacting within the space they’re in.

This photo was taken while I was back on the East coast in 2005, while visiting with my family, celebrating the return of my little cousin Jimmy from serving in Afghanistan.  He and his wife Shelly organized a great day bringing family and friends together for food and drink and celebration.  For me, this started with a round of golf.

After a delayed overnight flight and a rude re-introduction to the early morning heat and humidity of an East coast August, I was shuttled onto the course to meet up with my partners for the round – I was honored to be teamed up with my cousin and uncle and enjoyed their obvious camaraderie.

This image was appropriately taken with my Olympus point & shoot film camera – a true snapshot camera.  But that having been said, I’ve taken several images with it over the years that I’ve really enjoyed and it has proven to be much more than just for snapshots.  Of course it has been a long while since I’ve pulled that camera out, it having long been replaced by digital point and shoot cameras.

This photograph is from a Yosemite backpacking trip back in 2001.  This was my big break from work during which I took several trips both international and throughout the US.  One of those domestic trips was a ‘family’ backpacking trip in Yosemite with Karl’s family and a few stragglers (including me).

I took this picture of Cindy, sitting along the ridge of Yosemite Valley, just around the corner from Yosemite Falls.  I was going for a farily typical environmental portrait, placing emphasis on the individual while still providing details of the surrounding area.  In this case, the valley assisted in the set up.  First, the sheer distance between the subject and the valley floor (3000 feet straight down, well over a mile to the trees and mountains in the background) provides a good separation and easy focus isolation.  Second, the frequent campfires in the valley campgrounds create a hazy distance, which bumps up the relative clarity of the near subject.

This picture would have been taken with my Contax camera (I’m fairly certain) though it could also have been one of my earlier Nikons.  I most likely would have been shooting a Kodak color negative film.  My negs and slides are in deep storage now so I can’t know for sure without digging.  It was printed at Photoworks though and then the print was scanned back in on a Canon flatbed scanner – that was how I did things back then.  That I know because of the ’sloppy’ full borders around the image.

I took this photo of Maggie and Ellie in December 2004.  Meg had asked me to take some photos of the girls for their holiday card, so the 4 of us trekked up to the park where I took some candid shots.

I always liked this series of pictures; the girls were in good moods and they were really cute in their matching pyle sweaters.

This photo was taken later in the session, when we were packing up and heading back to the house.  The girls were still really giddy and so they marched off waving goodbye.

I used my Nikon N80 and slide film for this series – this was before I purchased my first digital SLR.  More of the photos from this day can be seen here: http://www.picsfromtrips.com/snapshots/2004-photos/nieces/

This is a photograph taken of my niece Ellie, back in 2002. She was only one month old at the time with a head full of black hair.

I like this photo because, if you know Ellie, you can recognize her in this picture even though she is so young. Her cheekbones, nose and mouth still look similar today.

From a classical portrait perspective, this is also a nice shot (if I do say so) with a nice depth-of-field keeping her face mostly in focus but the background, including her seat, out of focus. Additionally, the focus is sharpest on the nearest eye which also has a glimmer of white from a reflection of light. These are all classical elements of a portrait.

I took this image with my Nikon N80 film camera with a Sigma f/2.8 zoom lens – one of their nicer pro-series lenses, but cheaper than the Nikon lenses I have since upgraded to. The Sigma lens was able to produce nice quality images but the feel of the lens didn’t match that of the Nikons or certainly of the Contax lenses that I had recently been shooting with.

A few other images from this day can be seen here, each of which was taken during this week, in 2002.