This is the Rothbart Family. Wonderful family I've had the pleasure of knowing for many years. This was the first time , though, that I got to shoot their family. This was a great location up in Marin that lent itself to many different looks that I had JUST shot at weeks before with the Rhodes family. Since they knew each other, and the Rothbarts saw the Rhodes' pictures, they too agreed that it was a beautiful location. The kids particularly liked my "silly face" shots where I have everyone make the craziest face they can. Everyone had a good time, even the furriest of Rothbarts :)
When I first approached this shoot, like all my shoots, I want the images to be spectacular. ESPECIALLY when you're friends with the subject AND the subjects happen to be really creative people themselves. Part of me thought. . . "oh, I had just shot here, so I know what it looks like, where everything is, this will be easy". But then I thought. . . "Wait!!! I don't want to simply duplicate what I did from another shoot! And they know each other! That would be the WORST if they both sent out Christmas cards that looked identical". So I had to force myself to go in with an open mind and no 'preconceived' ideas about what to shoot. Although we used some of the same locations (because it would be wrong not to shoot in areas that look so good), I tried not to let a previous shoot influence me.
I really tried to make sure to read the day and the location and the light and get what was going to look the best for that moment.
After looking at the images when we were done, I was thrilled the way they came out, but in my mind, I noticed some similarities between the last shoot and this one, but we managed to get a different look out of this shoot. I don't know if it's just the way my brain works to compose a shot, or I was subconsciously influenced by my previous experience there, or, I'm just reading into it too much, but in the end, it's the people who really make the photographs, and I was lucky to have such wonderful subjects.
