How I Made the Image | Phoenix Family Photographer

Photography is more about how you see than how technical you get.

In order to see the world differently, you have to change your positions and work through the process of seeing. It is true for life and it is crucial to making great images. If your photography process is choreograph a photo session flow, pose your subjects and rapid fire your shutter hoping that you catch a good one, the best result you can get is a technically right image. It does not show your unique voice and perspective.

Today I want to walk you through my process getting to the final image here.

First of all — intention.

I know it is my comfort zone to rely on loud moments with big emotions to make good images. I wanted to challenge myself and create images that are quieter yet cinematic. It can be exhausting if a story is all big moments, right? So this is my intention, still honoring my documentary approach but aiming to create an image for the feeling and aesthetics.

Timing and Setting

When I am talking about timing and setting, I am not talking about the technical settings on aperture or ISO, not yet at least. I am talking about where I was and why I was taking photos.

I have been training for long-distance races for the past while, with homeschooling, I had to be creative to figure out my running schedules. There was no “run while kids are at school“ for me. For a couple of months, I will have 3 of my kids in some sort of class and the other one with me in the morning. I had a little less than 3 hours with me and him twice a week. That’s what we did for that time frame — mommy and son 1:1 date. First we went on a run/bike ride together close to sister’s school, then park playground, and finish it off with a starbucks run before we pick up sister.

This is the Salt River Walk Path in Mesa Arizona. The time of day was usually around 9:30 am, which gives us the very “unpleasant“non-golden-hour light. Since I was running, I had my phone but not my big camera.

I noticed the shadow on the ground, and I love a good pattern. I tried to take a photo while running at first. It was hard to keep up with the pace, keep my hands steady, and get a good composition with where my son was in relationship to me and all the patterns on the ground. So I gave up.

Another Try After the Run

After we finished the run, we went through this underpass to get to our car. It was my son’s favorite place because he could ride his bike down the big slope and go really fast.

As you can see here, the light shines on all the trees as well as the rocks on the wall behind my son. It was really hard for me to get a clean composition where my son can stand out from the rest of the environment. So this is not really working and this is definitely more of a “snapshot“.

When I turned around, I noticed that this side of the slope was a lot steeper which blocked out most of the distractions above the ground. Also when my son was in that patch of light, it creates a great silhouette. Now we are getting somewhere. However, with the tunnel and everything, we had so much negative space that is just black. It felt really heavy or even depressing especially when you can see that lone kid with his bike. this is not what I was going for—this is a happy and chill space. Not a sad scene.

Make it stand out

When I got closer to the bottom of the slope, I realized that if I got lower — as in literally squatting down, I could position my son against the sky. It was fun to wait for him to be on the side to catch the full silhouette of him and the bike. Along with the other shapes I see in the image, it is definitely more graphic/aesthetic-driven than a moment driven image.

Then someone walked by and I saw his shadow lining up with the blue square on the wall. It got me thinking that maybe I turn myself towards the wall and use horizontal frame instead of the vertical frame, I could get ride of the light pole, the signs, the tree — even though they are graphically interesting as shapes and contexts, they don’t really add that much to my story. They are not super relevant. What does not add, substracts. I want to get ride of them.

I was using x0.5 wide angle lens so I stayed with it to show scale. I wanted the leading lines but the image was too heavy on the left with both my boy and the light and nothing much on the right-hand side. So I waited for him to end up on the right hand side of the frame to make the image more balanced.

And I got one where his head is lined up with that square on the wall perfectly. There we have it. The shot I liked the most out of this set.

It might seem that I spent a long time figuring this out on site, but it was only like maybe 5-10 minutes total and that includes time waiting for my son to ride his bike uphill, looking at stuff on top, then come back down. There were a lot of moving around on my end and once I found my spot, I just waited there for him to come into position.

I do not direct my kids to go faster, go closer to the wall, or stop at certain spot. It takes them out of their element so fast. I was lucky that I got my frame quickly but that is not always the case. However, this was a place we went twice a week for multiple months, if I spend 5 minutes each time, there gotta be one day, I am lucky enough to get that one shot because I know exactly where I should stand and what I am waiting for.

Hope that was helpful for you to see my process of making an image instead of just snap a quick picture. I promise, the more you slow down and think when taking a photo, the easier and faster it gets for you to notice something interesting. Let me know if you have any questions about the process.

Now go practice!

Please share with me as well if you have made an image that you are really proud of, following this process or if something is not working and you want me to help you troubleshoot!