Weddings and portraits in Northern California, including San Francisco, East Bay, Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley

After a long winter’s hibernation (mostly in the halls of Children’s Hospital Oakland) and Shan’s first pregnancy, now nearly 21 weeks along, we’re ready to poke our head above ground.  And ready we need to be!  Spring means the sun is out and the hills are green. With several engagement sessions and  a wedding already this spring, photo season has arrived!  

Nothing really says spring more than Easter (though Shan might mention spring cleaning), so to flaunt their Easter best, we present Miss A & Mr. A. 

It’s our third time around for madman Mr. N.  His mother Betsey recently finished her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley.  Because they live nearby, we took some time on an overcast day to tour around campus before Mr. N’s baby sister is born.  He’s very excited to be a big brother.  Well, he’s excited about everything, because that’s what being three is all about!

Shooting in an overcast day can sometimes be a challenge.  When shooting, I’m often thinking of how I’ll bring the surrounding elements into the photo without interfering with a proper exposure of the subject.  Since I don’t shoot with flash, this often means avoiding backlighting and complex shadows (like those that come from trees), and it often means finding ways to keep the sky colorful.  On an overcast day, there’s just no chance for the sky to have color whatever you do with your exposure, so it’s better to use it either as a neutral background that the viewer can forget about, or eliminate it from the photo by shooting down on a subject.  The bricks near the Campanile made it easy to introduce an element of color in those shots where the horizon line is visible, not to mention the vivid violet that Betsey was wearing.

Many thanks to Dan, Betsey and Mr. N!

All text and images, Copyright 2010 Round Top Photography.  All rights reserved

The blog had a major crash with the onset of the new year, and it’s been a bit before my hosting company got it all together.  If you read deeply enough, you’ll see me slowly and surely restoring all of the photos that were lost because of the crash.  About half of the blog lost its photos.  So I’ve got some chores to do!

I’ve been knocking around the idea of a medical blog that runs separately from this blog, one that reviews the pediatrics literature and spells out some of the new and some of the old information for the layman.  I’ll link to it when I’ve got my first few posts written.

This year promises to be a great year for photography.  We have weddings booked through the summer and fall months.  Our first is in March.  Shan got quite a Christmas present – a Hasselblad medium format camera with plenty of film and fun Hasselblad accessories.  As well, Shan graduates this May, after which I bet her photo output will both leap and bound.  All that, and promises to work on my core!  It must be January!  It’s time to return to the pools at Cal.  My goal is 200 miles in the water by the end of June.

I’ve been watching many other photographers lately.  Though my interest was limited to just a few fine art and editorial photographers in the past, I’ve expanded my watchlist to include lots of the wedding and portrait photographers.  Following them is made particularly easy with the popularity of social media, though the Google Reader is an old tool that I just discovered how to use effectively.

Keep your eye out for more photos soon.  I’m processing three family and child shoots as we speak.

Tim

tim [at] roundtopphotography.com