Josh's 9yr old pictures at Cedar Breaks

We took Josh's birthday pictures at Cedar Breaks while we were visiting Utah. ( We're tired of grass backgrounds, and we had to top the graffiti from last year). I thought the green trees and red rocks would look awesome with Josh's hair. It was also the afternoon, just like when we took Jonah's pictures, but somehow we were able to find lots of good spots for some photos. Maybe it was a little cloudier, and maybe there were more shaded places, but we got an overabundance of photos for Josh!

Of course, part of that high number is because Josh insisted that for every smiling picture, he wanted a "serious" picture. Surprisingly, a lot of the serious pictures looked better than the smiling ones (something to do with less shadows on the face). But because of Josh's big eyes, some of the serious ones looked pretty funny too.

A. The serious ones look better here. Or funnier, depending on your view.



 At first, Josh wasn't smiling very realistically (he was trying too hard), and it was driving me nuts, because they were nice locations. And my visions of red rock landscapes behind Joshua were hard to realize, due to the different settings needed to expose the person as well as the background. These pictures ended up looking almost fake because of how much they needed to be manipulated after the fact.

B. The bottom two are nice but maybe a little strange; the light on the top two is nice.

C The wildflowers were blooming everywhere while we were there, and we didn't want to pass up an opportunity to use them in one or two pictures. See, these 'serious' ones look pretty nice, right?



 
 D There were a lot of leaning-on-tree poses, but they worked pretty good. I wish Josh was smiling in the upper left one, the light is really nice in it.



E.
As the afternoon progressed (we went on the Alpine Loop trail, it was really fun) Josh got better at smiling realistically, and we started to get a few better faces. I love his laugh in the flowers, though the arms on the hips pose is a little silly.


 

F There were  a lot of neat staircases, so we had to get in on that. I think the bottom right might be the best face, though I like the background in the top right.






G We had to try this one in black and white too:


H  We got in a few good smiles near the end. I like the top left maybe.




I And we finished out the day strong. These are all pretty good.



J Oh, and lets not forget our couple of horizontal pictures. They were alright, though the light is bad on the bottom.




What do you think?

.