I told him that I was drawing the line with a hike this year for me and the kids when I found out leeches could be a big part of the hike–SO GLAD I OPTED OUT!  And don’t ask me why I don’t have a picture of his bloody feet!  Disgusting!  🙂

As you look at these photos, you’ll notice how sometimes they are WIDE horizontals and other times TALL verticals.  Instead of zooming in and focusing on the emotion of my subjects, I’m documenting where we were, what surrounded us, the atmosphere and mood.  I’m playing with different levels of Saturation in Lightroom to see if I like more of a muted color or more vibrant color–no right or wrong–just playing.  If you love capturing people, Setting is something that is easy to forget.  So what about a photo exercise for photography family travel to heighten our awareness of the Settings in our everyday lives?  What about going abroad within your home?  I know that my home OFTEN feels like a jungle!  Ha!

What about walking through your home, pretending you have special photography glasses on and seeing your home as a collection of different settings.  What are the Settings that you live in and see everyday?  Which one of these Settings are incredibly significant to your family?  What creative things happen in these spaces?

Blaze loves to build Blanket Forts in the living room.  I wanted to capture the Setting shot of him reading under his Blanket Forts b/c this is a Setting that is built and torn down every week in our home.  This is a Setting that I will want to remember when he’s grown tired of Blanket

Exercise for photographing family travel:  Settings with a Purpose

You will be working with the same two subjects you chose for the Defining Details and Capturing Conflict exercise.  Work at capturing Settings that are significant to your subjects.  This could be their bedroom, a favorite room in the house, maybe it’s not even a room.  Maybe it’s a space they’ve created.  Maybe the Setting is outside.

The Setting you capture has a purpose.  It allows us to see where the story is taking place.  The Setting adds dimension to their overall story.   The Settings tells us more about our subject.

Your assignment is to take 4-5 images of Settings with a Purpose (think 2-3 favorites from your shoots with each subject)  Regardless of technical know-how, storytelling images are what impacts people.  And you can get storytelling image on Auto Mode with a little direction.

Looking forward to seeing how you capture Settings, post your photos on my Facebook page for some feedback!

Much love from the four of us!

Me Ra, Brian, Pasci and Blazey

To learn more about capturing Settings and other Story Telling Elements that you can capture with your camera, check out our Award Winning DVDS, Refuse to Say Cheese and Beyond the Green Box!