Cristen Farrell Photography

I won a free session with Cristen Farrell through a Twitter giveaway when she was launching her site. I’d seen some of her graphic design work before, but hadn’t seen much of her photography so I didn’t know what to expect, really. We met her on a Sunday morning at Hart Park in Newhall, spread out a blanket and started trying to corral the kids so she could take some shots. Of course, neither the 3yo nor the 7yo were interested in being really cooperative, and no sooner would we have one settled than the other would be up and running around. As far as we could tell she got a few shots where we were facing the camera, but it didn’t feel like we’d been very successful.
After that experiment, she had us wander up past some of the older buildings in the park, as well as around the petting zoo. She was snapping shots pretty much the entire time. After an hour or two, she said she had enough to work with — it didn’t feel like a traditional shoot so it was hard to tell that we’d been able to get much done.
A week or so later, she let us know that our shots had been edited and were available on her site for us to browse and order. Much to our surprise, there were over 50 beautiful shots for us to pick from, many of them captured while we weren’t looking. Those, in particular, were the most exciting of the bunch — they were natural and not posed, but the composition was as beautiful as if she’d spent lots of time setting up each shot. She’d also done something in the editing room to make the colors really POP — everything looked realistic, but just a bit brighter than life. Overall it made a really interesting visual.
The brightly colored shots were also balanced out with quite a dee she’d chosen to do in black and white. It was really nice to have the calm beauty of those shots to balance the vibrance of the other ones.
We ended up purchasing more than we’d planned, but the investment was well worth it. This was a MUCH better choice than going back to Picture People or one of the other mall shops…