RB Photo and Design

Once again we had the chance to shoot Draven's pictures, and as usual he was a ton of fun! This time we set up inside and used a backdrop and a few props and just let him do whatever. I knew when it was time to stop when he threw an egg at me! lol....Here are a few from the series.

A lot going on this weekend, we have a birthday party to go to on Friday for a friend of ours baby's 1st birthday and then picking up my daughter...Saturday is my wife's birthday and her nieces baby shower. Saturday is supposed to be a nice day so I may go out and shoot some pics while Jeannie and Chrissy are at the baby shower. Today is also our baby girl Bella's birthday...she is a year old today!

A lot of videos actually, lol. And the one thing they all hit on is defining who you are as a photographer. To look at your images and see if you can tell what makes your images special. So I did just that. I took some time to look at my images and see what my style is and see if I could point to the things that make my images unique. Here is what I came up with. 1. I like to keep my images simple. I don't like cluttered backgrounds. 2. I dislike blown out skies so I use flash a lot out doors. 3. I dislike using textures and selective coloring. I want my images to stand out on their own with out a lot of effects. 4. I love black and whites & vignettes. 5. I shoot a lot in portrait orientation, probably 90% of the time. 6. I dislike shooting with a tilt. 7. I like my images to be contrasty. 8. I like longer focal lengths, I use my 85mm 1.8 a lot for portraits and here recently I have been using my 70-210mm f4 a lot. 9. I love shooting portraits wide open, especiall...

Its been 6 months today since we lost our Charlie. I love you my bestest pal and miss you so much....

This is some of the best advice I have ever received. K eep I t S imple S tupid. The next time you are editing an image, take a moment and ask yourself if what you are doing is really enhancing the image or are you trying to improve a mediocre image. With programs out there like Photoshop and Portrait Professional, it is very easy nowadays to do all kinds of things to our images. Adding texture layers, doing selective coloring and softening a persons skin are super simple. But are these effects really enhancing your images? If the image is awesome to begin with why add these effects? Now I am not saying that editing effects have no place in photography, there are plenty of instances where adding a slight vignette will greatly enhance the subject matter of the image and there will always be that person whose images can benefit from some cloning and skin softening but it is very easy to overdue the editing and ruin a picture that on its own would have been great. I see a lot of portrai...

When setting up your subjects to photograph, avoid placing them in the center of the frame. Place them to the right or left of the frame leaving the empty space in front of the subject so they have room "to look into". Try using the rules of third. Placing your subject in one of the spots circled in the above image. Make sure your horizons are straight, and do not put your horizon in the center. Make a decision on which is more interesting, The sky/skyline or the foreground. Use diagonal lines to to draw the viewers attention to your subject. When photographing a group of people place them in a grouping that resembles a triangle or a circle surrounding one or two of the subjects. Watch out for trees and power lines "growing" out of your subjects head.Try to use backgrounds that are clean around your subjects head and aren't cluttered in the background. One last tip...Do not place your subject in the direct sunlight or facing the sun. Always place the sun behi...

I am going to be spending the weekend working on all the websites and facebook pages updating them to reflect the changes in our business model and pricing.keep checking back to see all the changes!