The Holiday are fast approaching...it seems that they arrive faster and faster each year! Holidays bring family and friends together, and you know what that means... lot's of photos need to be taken. Photos for Holiday cards, party photos, and just plane old family gathering photos. If you're like me, you are the designated family photographer. Danielle and I had 8 other designated family photographers for our Holiday Edition Natural Light Portrait Workshop.

Our workshop got underway at our 4,000 square foot, Aperture Academy gallery in the Pruneyard shopping center, in Campbell. First up on the agenda was to get to know everyone. Danielle and I introduced ourselves and then heard from each student individually, their name, camera gear, skill level, and reason for enrolling in the class. After getting acquainted, I talked about camera settings, including the exposure triangle. Then went over some compositional basics. Such as, rule of thirds and "S' curves, and how they relate to portrait photography. After my power point presentation, the hands-on fun began. Danielle had arranged for us to have 2 beautiful models, adorned in Holiday attire. We worked with our models against some white holiday lights, which created a very cool sparkling backdrop. We got everyone familiar with their camera settings, in order to achieve a lovely bokeh (attractive, out of focus background). The students were really capturing some amazing images. Along with the white lights, we worked with the natural light provided by a large window. During the day time, using a window as a light source can provide enough light to capture some beautiful portraits. After the image capture portion of the workshop, Danielle and I sent the students out to grab a bite to eat, before our afternoon post processing session. While they were out, we uploaded all the images from our morning session, onto an iMac workstation. With full bellies and open minds our students returned to learn some post processing techniques in Adobe Lightroom. I went over the basics of the "develop" module, including color temperature, tint, tone, lens corrections, and post crop vignetting. After the basics I went into some of the cool tools that Lightroom offers for portrait retouching. With the "adjustment brush" we brightened the eyes, smoothed out the skin, and even whitened teeth. After the overview, Danielle and I walked around to assist the students individually. It was really fulfilling to see all the amazing images that the students captured during our day together. They should be all set for all those family and holiday get togethers.

If you'd like to join us at one of our workshops, you can find the schedule/sign up here.

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