Mai's & David's Family & Holiday Photo Session

Mai is a fellow registered nurse and coworker at the San Francisco Veteran's Affairs. She had asked me to take outdoor pictures of her family after she found out that I am also a photographer. She also requested to have holiday photos taken that would include her mom and David's mom.

For the location of the outdoor family photos, I and Mai decided to shoot at Mori Point in Pacifica, CA. A day before the shoot, I visited the location in the morning after work to plan my shots and to track what time the golden hour would be, and where the sun would exactly be during the shoot using a very helpful iPhone app.

On the day of the shoot, the weather cooperated as hoped. The carefully planned time, location, and angles provided for a very warm and soft natural lighting that we didn't even have to use the light reflector that we had handy. I also managed to capture the soft but distinct natural rim lighting around the subjects that I had hoped for since planning the shoot.

I would usually help most clients choose what colors to wear for their photo shoots, but Mai, being an artistic and very talented cake maker that she is, is very well versed in color theory. Her choice of clothing colors for her family perfectly complemented each other's and also the setting.

Then onto taking the holiday photos...

Mai put up their Christmas tree earlier this year so we could take their holiday photos in front of it. To make it look like they're surrounded by Christmas lights, I strategically framed most of the shots to include the reflections of the tree lights on the glass window and door. I also used a single strobe light setup with a soft box and honeycomb light modifier attachment to concentrate a soft light towards the subjects. The strobe light was purposely on low setting to balance it out with the incandescent ambient lighting in the house to maintain a warm ambient light in the photos. After metering the light sources and figuring out the best white balance for the setting, we started our socially distanced photo shoot while also observing proper COVID19 precautions with our PPE's and frequent hand sanitizing.

Mai's decision to dress her family in red and black truly made them properly stand out against the white and gold motif of the Christmas decors. Then the grandmas joined in this special memory in the making.