I photographed this family portrait session at a park close to my house called Everhart Park, which is located right here in West Chester. This time of year is particularly nice to shoot photos in Everhart park for the beautiful fall colors and bright vibrant orange and red trees we can stack into the background of a portrait. We started out with some standard group portraits and I setup one light in a softbox to balance the lighting on the group with the beautiful late afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees in the backgrounds of these shots.
After we accomplished the goal of creating a nice set of family group portraits, it was time to loosen up a little bit and shoot some ‘lifestyle’ type shots. I put away my lighting setup and just shot some natural light pictures of them walking across the backlit field, and then we made a short trip to the playground to keep the kids in good spirits.
The kids were happy having just been to the playground in the middle of the photo session, and morale was generally very high, so I wanted to try for just one more family group portrait. This time I decided not to use lighting, and aim for more natural feeling pictures using only available light, in this case the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the autumn leaves behind them.
