Anyone?

Another awesome family, another fun extreme portrait. The Buell’s (I’ll refrain from the Ferris jokes) contacted me about creating their own unique family portrait. Unlike Nadine, though, they didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted – just that they wanted something different than your every-day family portrait. Well that’s what I do, isn’t it?

We didn’t have a lot of time, since Mark, the eldest son (at right)was visiting from the East coast for the week. I figured the best way to do something interesting, would be to overtly showcase everyone’s traits; their favourite things to do. Reading, reading with tech, drumming, skateboarding, and fashion. Pretty straight-forward I think?
I even sketched it out before I met anyone or saw their place:

My only assumption was that they had a couch. Didn’t know the size of the room, location, look, anything. So I come prepared for whatever we get. We did have to move a coffee table out of the way to give room for the camera, and I used a wider angle lens than I normally like to for composite images (17mm – it’s why you see some distortion in the image). In the end, though, I think the distortion kind of adds to the pic – the youngest son in the front, with the drums, gets a bit extra highlighting by being “pushed” forward and everyone else kind of falls into place.

The family seems pretty pleased with it, as they choose their own selection of frames for their final portrait (this one contains my selects). I think they should print it out big for over that couch!

If you’re interested in having your own family portrait taken, like this, get in touch – I warn you – only fun families need apply.

If you’re interested in seeing a larger version of this image, or lighting info, head over to Flickr.

Posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2011 at 8:00 am. Filed under: Portraits Tags: Extreme_Portrait, Family, Ottawa RSS 2.0 feed.