Eek! I am so excited to share these! For a long time, for years and years actually probably, I have wanted to create portraits of people amidst sunflowers. When I was taking photo classes in college, I took some photos of some of my friends out in front of wild sunflowers that grew alongside the road next to a farm and I have always wanted to do that again. (I should see if I can find those photos and post them - they were in black and white film.)
I loved how these kids were so at home with nature. Tall grass, june bugs, bird poop, climbing up on the little hill where some of the sunflowers are growing, a sudden rain and dust storm - nothing fazed them. And when I looked back at the photos, I was really struck by the sweetness of the siblings toward each other. These kids just really love each other and it was so cool to see that I had caught little looks between them here and there. Scroll down and see what I mean - I'm especially thinking of the middle son looking at his older sister and the older sister with her hand on her youngest brother's head for a moment while they are all playing with the last sparkler, before we called it a night and went inside and had pizza! Oh and I especially love the look of the two boys as their mom is handing out the sparklers. See her hand in the top part of the frame and then see their expressions? That is exactly what I was hoping for when I started thinking about doing this kind of portrait shoot. I wanted to capture summer, the essence of summer and the joy and excitement that I think you can only feel when you are that age. Oh! My! Goodness! Sparklers!
These kids were total troopers. It was hot, of course, I mean it's July and it's Arizona, but they put up with the heat and we got some relief from a dust storm that started blowing in just as we were starting to shoot. It was a mild dust storm (compared to the massive dust storm we got two nights later) but it turned the sky a yellowish color and so if you scroll down a bit, you will see what I mean. When I was editing these photos, I tried to un-yellow them. I always shoot photos in camera raw and so I can change the color temperature, and I tried for a while before I remembered, hey! the sky really was very yellow due to the yellow dust the storm was blowing in. And luckily that dust storm also brought a little rain, and so if you notice the images where the two older kids are dancing? Well, it had just started to rain. Which made us all do a happy dance since it's been ages since we saw rain.
For this shoot, I finally got to use my Ralph Lauren paint that I got on clearance at Home Depot. I painted an old door with the bright blue metallic paint and faced it against a north wall (which makes for pretty light) and got to photograph the sister. (I have gold and silver and purple paint that I want to use on future shoots, and so it was cool to see that I really like the results with this paint.)
