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Madison Family Photographer | Breakfast for Snack

Welcome to the March edition of our Storytellers Blog Circle! If you’re new here, our intention is to use our collective posts to give you, our beautiful and amazing readers, our storyteller point of view. We’ll provide a little background, and then tell you why we’re drawn to the image and pass on the technical details (ignore if that’s not your thing 🙂 ).

The house sits in beautiful stillness and silence much of the workday. Light filters through white curtains and green plant leaves. The refrigerator hums and NPR softly croons. Outside voices come as a bell curve of sound–far away murmurs to discernible discussions and trail off as murmurs once again. Working throughout these daily, quiet rhythms is deeply revitalizing. And before I know it, three growing boys crash through the front door, vibrating with energy and words. They drop all their winter gear, backpacks, and violins at their feet and make beelines for the kitchen. Both joyful chatter and lanky limbs crisscross over each other, reaching for apples, bagels, cereal, clementines, protein shakes, while simultaneously telling schools stories and jokes and spilling milk. I need both parts of my day to feel whole. {Though I could do without the spills.}

My storytelling goal wasn’t to show the chaos on this round, but rather the simplicity of the story.  Their snack du jour is cereal, and that typically means two or three bowls each. Isn’t that crazy?

The light in the kitchen only looks like this in the afternoon, which automatically separates this shot from being confused with breakfast cereal.  I’m loving the shape (circles to rectangle bag) and temperature (warm vs cool) contrasts.

Light coming through a bag of O-shaped cereal

Boy pours milk into bowl of cereal

They assemble in the kitchen and then move to our dining room. There is window light coming in from the top of the frame and a smattering of warm, sunlight coming in from camera right. I  had originally positioned myself head-on in front my teen and He.Wasn’t.Having.It. Respect the teen, folks. As I moved in from the sides, I spotted the top-down view theme: circles. Circles for Days. Top down view of teen bringing spoonful of cereal to mouthCompositionally, there is a strong diagonal and a triangle.

screenshot overlay of compositional grid

And maybe even a bit of Fibonacci Spiral.

Screenshot of circular compositional overlay Technical details: 24-70L @ 24mm, ISO 4000, f/4, 1/250

Immediately after this, his younger brother added his bowl to the table and I was able to make this.

Top down view of teen eating cereal. Additional bowl sits untouched.

I love that I was able to let his spoon clear the bowl–those centimeters of space are glorious to me. And I think it’s actually a stronger diagonal composition, once the brother’s spoon was in play.

Same tech settings (1/250 of sec was cutting it sooooo close to get a hungry teenage boy’s spoon in focus. Toddlers are slower.)

That said, while the above scene maybe compositionally stronger, it find it too busy for my simplicity goal. This leads me back to just A Teen and His After School Cereal.  I love the negative space and the smidgen of warm and cool light.

Top down view of teen bringing spoonful of cereal to mouth

Shoot me any questions you may have about my storytelling process!

In the meantime, please continue the circle to see Renata’s storytelling post HERE.

xo, Jen

 

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2 comments
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  • Rebecca Hunnicutt FarrenMarch 14, 2018 - 1:13 am

    Hi Jen- I really enjoyed hearing the how and why of how you shot this series. Thank you so much for explaining it so clearly, and for using your words to paint a clear picture of the scene. It made me want a bowl of cereal too!!ReplyCancel

  • Andrea MoffattMarch 14, 2018 - 11:47 am

    Oh my gosh Jen. Your first paragraph is pure art. (And I’m not just saying that because I love NPR crooning in the background.) I love reading your writing, but you’re also an amazing teacher! Loved how you showed your decision making process in this post.ReplyCancel