Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
Nature Family – Ottawa Editorial Portrait Photographer Justin Van Leeuwen
Spring is in the air here in Ottawa. Which is basically the familiar musk of rotting leaves and the leftovers of many a dog-walker from the winter, I swear, it’s worse than Paris in my Hintonburg neighbourhood. That said, I don’t think Winter is quite done yet, there’s always some sort of snowfall come April. So to remind you about that, I wanted to share a quick shoot I had for Capital Parent newspaper.
The setting was perfect, it was an article on tracking animals in the winter, and it had snowed about 20cm the night before our shoot. Fresh snow, a willing family, and hungry birds! I know chick-a-dee’s aren’t exactly animals you need to track, but the likelihood of coming across a fox or deer were slim and we were dealing with a limited timeline with the two kids. To keep things as simple as possible, I brought out one big light-modifier, the Westcott 7′ Parabolic umbrella – which is as big as it sounds – and put a Elinchrom Quadra through the back of it to get a good amount of fill on the family without losing detail in the blue sky. I wrote about it over on the Westcott Blog.
You can see the cover photo larger over on Flickr, as well as an alternate with a lot more sun flare (if that’s your sort of thing).