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.