Author: Jesse Boone

Jesse has spent the last decade as a professional photographer. He is co-founder of Finest Moments and Wedding as Art. He is also the creator of SnapShotBot. Jesse's outdoor fine art photography has been featured in PDN and his wedding photography has been featured in Destination I Do and the Wedding Channel.

Our 17th Anniversary

This image is from a recent wedding where Nelli and I took a boat to the event on an island.

Today is our 17th anniversary.  Nelli and I have been together for over half of our lives.  I’m not one to typically project social media PDA, but I’ll make an exception.  We’ve been through so much together, even just in the last year, that today feels special.  Our life together has been a great big adventure filled with the unpredictable, chaotic and the beautiful.  As two kids from small towns in Montana, we never would have dreamed of seeing the places we’ve seen together.

This week Nelli happened to meet a girl whom she used to babysit as an infant when Nelli worked at a Day Care.  When we first started dating, that was Nelli’s job.  I remember how much she loved those kids and how she was a mother to so many of them.  Coming from a broken family, I think she was a mother to me in the early stages of our relationship as well.  She would take care of my laundry, pick my clothes out and make sure I was eating enough.  Now, 17 years later, I see her doing this everyday for our seven children.  The kids all lean on her so heavily that sometimes I wonder how she does it.

We are about to have our 8th and final child.  It seems crazy sometimes, I can’t imagine a life with anyone else.  The last year has been one of our most challenging.  We moved away from our established home and our established business.  We gathered all our belongings is a trailer and drove 2,000 miles to the place we always wanted to raise our family.   We took on a major fixer upper.  We started new businesses together.  We said we couldn’t work well together.  We said “We do best when we work together”.  We were surprised by another pregnancy.  She had a cancer diagnosis.

Sometimes in the midst of these huge changes it has felt overwhelming.  Parenting our children felt like a full-time job in itself.  We’ve wondered if and how things were going to work out.  We’ve had moments where we felt distant from each other.  We sought counseling both together and individually.  We tried doing separate projects and creating space.  I hope this post reaches someone who needs to be reminded that when you are going through hard times, things do get better.  Love can be sparked suddenly and grow quickly, even when you don’t expect it.

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We’ve now celebrated 17 anniversary dates.  We’ve photographed a wedding on our anniversary, and we’ve been to the tip of South America on our anniversary.  Today, Nelli will be helping me setup a new photo exhibit for Missoula’s First Friday.  I look back and reflect on the years together and feel so grateful that God put this person in my life who would support me in all my dreams.  Literally, everything I’ve wanted to attempt, she’s been right there to help me in any way possible.  I remember 10 years ago, when I quit my good paying job, lost my family health insurance and came home to tell her I wanted to start a photography business.  She believed in me.  Every time she says to me “You can do it.”   I know she means “We can do it.”  She fills in the gaps and see’s my blind spots.  Nelli has a deep faith when I’m afraid and trying to take things on my own.  I don’t know where I’d be without her.  Today as we hang up photos together, I’m filled with thanks and the reality of an aging-type-of-love that only comes from being married to your best friend.

Here is a link to the the best scene from the movie we saw on our first anniversary.  It means a little more with with all the history built in.

And one last scene for the extra sappy:)

If you want to see more of what we are up to today, you can visit wjboone.com

Technical Guide for Photographing Families on Location

Photographing families is a good way to get involved in your community and build a sustainable portrait business. Here are a few of our technical tips to make sure the images turn out the best they possibly can:

1) Lens Selection

Choosing the right lens is important for the overall quality and look of your images.  It’s actually still a touch decision for us, even after 10 years.  My two favorite choices for photographing families is the 50mm and the 70-200.  Over the last 5 years we have chiseled our lens selection down to include all primes with the exception of the 70-200.  Let’s take a look at what these two lenses bring to the table:

• 70-200mm – This lens has the advantage of compressing the background and eliminating lens distortion on the perimeters of the image.  It is also great to be able to zoom in and capture candid closeups.  If you have a second shooter for your session, this is a great option for them to capture the natural unexpected moments.  The disadvantage of using this lens if you are shooting alone is that it’s harder to interact from that distance, especially if you are photographing a family with little children.

• 50mm – This lens is great to being able to be close enough to your group to interact.  We use this whenever we have a group with small children and usually it’s on the main shooters camera.

• 35mm (runner-up) – The 35 is runner-up selection for specific situations.  We use this when we don’t have much room to work (like in the front of pews in a church).  It is borderline acceptable on the exterior of the frame regarding lens distortion.  We highly recommend leaving space on the perimeter of your frame when using this lens.  Wide lenses don’t compress the image in the same way that a long lens will.  Take a sample shot at 200mm and 24mm with your subjects on the outside edges of the frame and you will see what I mean.  The people in the middle of the group will appear in normal proportion, but the further you move to the edges, the wider your subjects become.  This is not a flattering effect.

2) Manual Settings and Focus

Choosing the right settings is important when photographing groups.  You will likely not want to shoot wide open when photographing multiple subjects together.  Your aperture setting should increase depending on how much depth or layers are in your frame.  For instance, you can photograph a single person at 1.8 aperture and get a sharp image of that person, but when Jim is placed directly over her shoulder, you will find that it’s impossible to achieve sharpness for both subjects.  You need to increase the aperture setting.  A large group shot can be shot at F8 and maintain focus throughout multiple layers.  If you really like the look of low aperture, or need to blow out the background, just make sure that all your subjects are on the same plane of focus.  We shot the below image at 2.8, but since we maintain a parallel plane with minimal layering, the shot turned out a great.  Another consideration is how close you are to the subject.  The closer you get – the smaller your focal plane becomes.  Another tip is to choose your focal point on the center subject who is closest to you.  The reason for this is that you have approximately 30% less drop off in your focal plane in the background (behind your selected focal point) as you do in the foreground (in front of your focal point).  family photo session montana

3) Lighting

Lighting is the first thing you should think about on a family location shoot.  We purposely schedule most of our sessions about an 90 minutes before sunset.  If you are doing multiple sessions in a day, you can start earlier.  The first thing you will want to look for is slightly directional backlight.  We want the natural light to provide an edge light without coming across the face.  If you are forced to shoot during the afternoon, look for an open shade situation with the sun behind your subject at a slight angle.  Our first consideration is where the best lighting is.  The background is our second consideration.  You can use a reflector or an off-camera flash to fill in light on the face but it’s not completely necessary.  It just depends what look you are going for.  Anytime we are shooting a beach session or sunset session, we are using a portable strobe with a beauty dish or softbox modifier. We usually position our strobes high and angled down on our subjects to resemble the sun, with the sun providing the backlight.

4) Business Tips

One of the best ways to break into the family portrait business is by first building a portfolio of your friends.  Once you have a good portfolio and a solid foundation of creating quality images, it’s time to offer a mini-session.  These 20 minutes sessions can be a great way to meet people and begin making money for your portraits.  Holiday greeting cards are a good way to get the word out.  We have gotten much of our portrait business based on the personal projects and cards we send out.  We also include our logo or website on our clients cards, which spreads the word about our service in a much more effective way than traditional advertising.  For more help on the business side check out our Coaching Page.

Jeff & Abby | Married in Cleveland

Jeff and Abby were married at the Western Reserve Historical Society Museum. There were so many spectacularly unique things about the wedding you are about to see. In ten years of photography, I had yet to photograph a reception that included a carousel and a tater tot bar – both of which I approve of without hesitation.  Did I mention the polaroid signing book? Or the reception was surrounded by the coolest of classic cars and planes?

There were so many things right with this wedding.  It really is what I love best about Cleveland.  It’s what I love best about weddings and live music.  Abby and Jeff were amazing.  To share the day with these two is an honor. We all witnessed a start-to-finish day of laughter and suprises (like the song written by Jeff’s dad played by The Vallures). All of that aling with two of the most joyful, loving people we know makes for quite a wedding day celebration. Here’s what it looked like from our perspective.

Bre & Max | Married at Coeur d’Alene Resort

Here’s a showcase from the beautiful wedding of Max and Bre. Nelli and I enjoyed spending time and getting to know them and their families. As anyone in the area would know, we had a few weeks of smoke from the forest fires here in the Northwest. Here’s what the view from the resort looked like when we arrived.

I was immediately ready to embrace the strange weather for the chance at unique images.  I think Max and Bre were going to embrace any weather and were just happy to be getting married, spending the day with the most important people in their lives.  I felt like we immediately clicked.  Nelli and I both know this would be a special day, not only for Max and Bre, but also for us.  We came to this very resort for our honeymoon.  Back then we would have never imagined photographing a beautiful wedding here.

As the day moved swiftly forward, the smoke lifted.  The joy of Max and Bre set the tone for an amazing time of celebration on the terrace overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene.  Congrats Max and Bre!  We are thankful to have been a part of your special day.