Wow, it has been so hot! I have been shooting inside and out! I'm so thankful for air conditioning! Here is one of my latest "ONE YEAR OLD" sessions! This is one of my favorite types of sessions! These little ones are at such a perfect age for portraits! The first birthday is such an incredibly special time for baby and more importantly, for mom (and dad too).
As a mom, if I could only afford professional portraits of my child just once in their childhood it would be the First Birthday! Look how special these are! This little guy however has been here before! See if you can find him in the galleries in my website!
These portraits were taken in my new favorite spot (next to my driveway!!!) The light I get is stunning and I just love the way it peaks throught the trees in the background. So if you come for a "studio session" don't be surprised if I say let's go to my driveway for our session! These were shot at high noon, a no no for most photographers but not with my secret spot in my driveway! I love it!
WE HAVE HAD AN OVERWHELMING RESPONSE TO THIS OPPORTUNITY! I BOOKED 100 KIDS IN ONE DAY AND HAD TO STOP! WE NOW HAVE A WAIT LIST!
Back to school fashions are coming in at krik-it in Wilton Center.
I will be in the store on August 19th to photograph babies and children in the latest fashions. If you think your baby or child enjoys being photographed and/or would like to play dress up, sign up for this fun opportunity! This is the first time we have opened this to the public! Before it was friends and family!
Select images from the session will be displayed at krik-it! The kids will get a kick out of seeing their photo in the store! They may also be used on www.krikitkids.com and www.momentsbyandrea.com. A very select few may also be used in marketing materials for either company.
Here are my three modeling in the Spring! They LOVED modeling! Even the D-Dog! Look at that little man!
WHO? Boys & Girls,
Infant to Size 14
WHAT? Modeling
WHERE? krik-it,
5 River Road, Wilton
WHEN? August 19th by Appointment
HOW? E-mail Andrea at... andrea@momentsbyandrea.com to book your appointment. Details will be forwarded to you at booking. A model release form will be needed to participate.
COMPENSATION? krik-it & Moments by Andrea are offering *25% off clothing and pictures from the event. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY to participate!
*Discount not to be combined with any other offer.
Siblings are encouraged to participate!
Last year some moms even used their modeling pictures for their Holiday cards!
This is an actual photo from last Fall's modeling session! It made an adorable Christmas card too!
krik-it carries clothing
Newborn to Size 14!
Models Needed for all sizes!
Andrea Topalian
andrea@momentsbyandrea.com
Wilton, CT
203-761-8558
www.momentsbyandrea.com
Here are some more PROOFS (unedited images) from Spring/Summer sessions, continued from my last post...There are so many more. I just grabbed these sessions at random. I want to get them all up but the image posting on my blog is not very easy!
It's a special summer for Grandma! Here is one of many sessions I have done as a gift for a grandma! We all know there is nothing more a grandma loves than her grandchildren! For this grandma to get her three grandsons together in a some portraits! Moms also got some of their children alone. I LOVE orange in the summer, particularly on boys. I have a shirt like this for Derek and it is my favorite. I also have a client that put this orange shirt on her son last year and I loved those pics! It is amazing against the green!
Here is an extended family session at my secret spot in Wilton. This was a gift for Grandma's birthday! What a nice idea! This is a traditional pose. We also got some other cute poses with the whole group as well as each individual family, grandma with her grandchildren, all the couples, kids only, etc.
Lots of love for Grandma! Here is another session for MOM!
Having fun with mommy! And look, Grandma too! We love our grandmas!
Big Bro/Little Sis! Too cute!
Big Sister has a secret!!! Studio sessions can be fun all year too!
This big sis has her hands full... and mom too! What a gang!! Gotta love it!
Modeling is hard work mom...
Just like when I was in mommy's belly! Oh the memories!
My secret spot! Through those trees is a peek at the Long Island Sound from WILTON!!!
I like to do mostly fun family photos like this but I also will try some formal ones like above.
Gotta love big brothers! We had a lot of really cute shots from this session. These are just a few.
OK, I have to stop somewhere! If you had a session and are wondering why your images aren't up here! It's purely because of lack of time! I hope to get them up later!
I can not believe that it is almost August? Why does Summer go faster than any other season?
So many sessions and so few posted to my blog. Ideally I would like to blog about each individual session but time does not allow. Here are a sampling of images,mostly from late Spring and early Summer. Most of these are actually just proofs, meaning they have not been digitally enhanced yet.My proof galleries already have the images sized correctly for the internet so it is the easiest place for me to pull the blog images from.
What does it mean that they have not been digitally enhanced yet? (STOP HERE and skip to the pics IF you aren't ready to fall asleep from boredom reading this blog post.) Well let me explain my production process (not what I planned on doing in this blog but why not). After each session I first back up all the images to a DVD (I learned the hard way to do it after each session and not wait). The next thing I do is go through the images and take out the ones that are obviously not keepers (closed eyes, odd faces, etc.), then I go through again to discard images that are similar to other ones, then again to try to get it down to a manageble number for my clients, then again to crop the ones I like in a way that best presents the image. Ocassionally, if time permits, I select a few of my favorites and spend some time enhancing them.yada, yada...are you really interested?
After that I save the images in another file and then I process them to go in an online gallery for my clients. It's time consuming but worth it. Even after all of that I am still left with a large number of images. I tend show my clients more images than most photographers do because I have a hard time getting rid of those "moments" and there are so many in a session. This is good and bad! Good because the clients get to see a lot, bad because it makes it hard for them to choose! It is the source of my one common complaint... "There are too many good images to pick from! How am I going to choose!". I think I hear that from about 80% of my clients. Not a bad complaint to get!! Regardless, I am working on improving it! yada, yada...you're still reading this?
Another not so great result of showing so many images is that I really don't have time to digitally enhance each image in photoshop. I depend on the clients to trust me that what they order will look much better when they receive their prints than what they see online. Besides, most people don't color calibrate their monitors so what they see is not what they will look like anyway! So, basically I save detail work for the images the client orders. I open up in Photoshop all the images they order, then I spend a fair amount of time going into detail touching up blemishes, enchancing the color, contrast, adding vignetes, softening skin, and adding contrast, sharpness and light to eyes, etc. This is not a skill I acquired over night. I actually hired a tutor three years ago to teach me and the rest of it has been learned through experience. I also have a little help from the countless "actions" I have purchased for photoshop.yada, yada, I tend to ramble as you can see...
When all of that is complete, I upload the images to my lab via a special web based program. My labs of choice are in California and Indiana. When the lab is finished they ship them to me via Fed Ex or UPS and I review the prints. Sometimes I see things that were not visible on my monitor and back to work I go with more touch ups and reordering the prints. This is just part of the cost of production. Sometimes I am also not happy with the color or contrast the lab applied and I send a request for reprints. You can not believe how much impact the lab can have on the final print! Try sending one digital image to different labs and see what you get back! They will all be different! It is extremely important which lab you use! The professional labs that we (professional photographers) use have not only the top of line papers and equiptment but also extremely talented and well trained employees that know what they are doing! Not the same can be said for some of the consumer labs! yada, yada, I can't believe anybody would read this long post!
TMI??? Sorry, I thought some poeple would be interested to know what goes on between the session and receiving the prints. My point in sharing this is to explain why I am qualifying these images as "proofs".
OK, yada yada Andrea, no need to explain so much, just show your pics!
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This is getting to be a rediculously long blog! Plus it is getting late! I still have a lot more galleries to go through to find images for the posting. My plan is to put together another blog post with images from the rest of my Spring/Summer sessions. There's more to come....
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oments by Andrea is a professional portrait studio located in Wilton, CT in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut, near New York. Owned and operated by Andrea Topalian, a professional portrait artist specializing in family photography including maternity portraits, newborn and baby photos, high school senior portraits, as well as candid portraits of children of all ages. Andrea’s Precious Moments Club is a popular baby portrait club that documents the important stages of a baby’s growth: newborn, six months and one year. 