Brian Bastinelli Blogging Post of Children Portraits

Today’s post has nothing to do with my photography. 

Now, I might be breaking some blogging protocol by pointing to another blogger’s work, but, I look at my blog as a learning space, and I think all of us can learn a lot from Brian Bastinelli post of come portraits of children on November 10^th, 12^th and 13th (at  http://brianbastinelliphotography.blogspot.com/).

I do not know Brian, but, Barry Armer, a fellow member of Bay Area Photo Club, attended a Radiant Vista workshop in Savannah with Brian; Barry has nothing but good things to say about Brian, and that’s good enough for me.

In these post Brian does some wonderful portraits of two girls and a boy.   I think there is a lot to learn about really good informal portraits from these shots.   But, the most important thing is that “they just work.” 

First, he makes the subject comes forward by isolating them from the background through lighting, focus or contrast.  The backgrounds are interesting, but yet, simple and complementary to the subject.

Second, the dresses that the girls are wearing are very simply—thus, no competition with their faces and their gestures.  However, the “little girl” aspect of their dress is introduced through their somewhat outrageous accessories, stocking, neck ware and bows in their hair.

Third, Brian lights the girls very well.  Since he does not tell us about the shots and I cannot see any tell-tale signs of the use of strobes, I assume that most of these were naturally lighted and the contrasting lighting was added in post processing.   Nothing wrong with doing this, especially when you do it as well as Brian does it.

Fourth, he uses unusual angles and perspectives to help capture what being a kid is all about—fun!

Finally, Brian’s post processing adds to, but does not take over the image.   It really supports the basic feeling one gets viewing the image.   I generally like the way Brian pushes his post processing to give his photographs a little edge, but he does not push it over the edge!   I think this is very hard to consistently do.

Brian, really good work; everyone else, let’s learn a few things from Brian’s work.