Jonah at Four

I know everyone's just so excited to see some more portraits on the plains! Right? RIGHT?!

 

 Elora has had several years where her birthday portraits have featured the vast grasslands, but I was realizing that for Jonah we've always taken photos with props: a tractor, a cowboy hat in a barn, etc. and he doesn't have any birthday pictures of just the prairie yet. Plus..where else would I take his pictures?

Actually, I saw a place owned by some of our friends in town with a bunch of colored barrels and I considered going there, but that's been done by everyone already, especially in Utah. And it's too far to go just to take pictures. I'm lazy like that.

So, Jonah. One day, we had fifteen minutes to take some pictures before dinner was ready. I thought he was wearing a cute outfit that made his eyes show up, and the lighting was really nice so we went outside and walked around for a minute. Most of them aren't even good enough to post- but we did find a pretty place where we took a handful that I like:

A.

In the bottom one I told him to open his eyes so I could
see them better!

I admit, we picked this spot because I wanted to capture the flowers too. Sometimes I like these, and sometimes it feels too much like "pose-my-kid-in-front-of-my-house" pictures. Even though it's not my house, its one nobody lives in.

The next day I dressed Jonah in blue again, hoping for an opportunity to go out. The day was cloudy, and I decided to go out midday, as the cloud cover should make it not too bright and it might be too dark in the evening. It worked for even lighting, but the white sky was a little bright so Jonah squinted a lot. Josh wanted to come too!

See all those brown stems? Those were the sunflowers from June.

 

 

 

I really liked the ones we took of Josh in the flowers where the hill went up behind him, so we took some pictures of Jonah near there first. The flowers are gone and the grass is long, so it's like a completely different place! These all turned out pretty cute. I think I like the two in "C" the best, especially the bottom one. I'm almost tempted to add in a cloudy sky behind him, because it looks so white it's like I took the sky out! But I hate changing photos that much.

B.



I know they're almost the same picture, but to a mother,
there are many nuanced differences in his expressions.

C.

 

Since these seemed to work out well, I again followed the same path as with Josh's photos, headed over to the cool fence with the big boards. This time, we did a different angle than Joshua's, so it's not the same. I was playing with different stuff in photoshop, so here are two versions of the same three pictures. I can't decide if I like the bright dreamy colors, or the faded ones the best:

 

D.

I like the bottom two the best; not sure which though.

 

We tried some sitting down, but Jonah was done with this spot and he wouldn't really look at me more than once:

 

E.

 

 

We walked until we found a nice spot with a hill to add some depth. Really, my vision for the day was more something like these rolling hills:
 

F.

But somehow a good photo with this background never materialized. Here's the small hill as the consolation prize:
G.

I like the bottom one.

H. The middle one here kind of has the landscape, though his face is iffy.



























 

 

Before we were done, we tried a few more in thick grass. These are pretty meh, and very similar to the first group except for the angle, but I wanted to post them because his face is so funny! Especially the bottom right..he looks like a little imp!

I.

 

Finally, here are some behind the scenes "moments". You know, when Jonah was done and wanted to leave?