My wife and I came to visit our daughter and son-in-law for the baptism of our granddaughter Beatrice on the weekend of February 22, 2025. I am now in the habit of taking two lenses with my camera when I don’t bring my entire kit. One lens is the Canon RF 24-70mm, and the other is the Lensbaby Spark selective-focus lens. With the latter, I capture casual shots of them and their 9 children at home, and often render the images in black and white in post-processing. The selective focus lens means that the photographer has greater control over the viewer’s attention, directing it where he wants it to go. The slight blur even of the relatively sharp area means that facial expression can be more noticeable. Simplification makes the image more expressive.
My Canon RF 24-70 is very sharp, and because its “field of view” is both wide (24mm) and narrow (70mm) it is quite versatile. (I do have to watch out for distortion close to 24mm, but it’s a minor concern.) With the 24-70 I usually keep the domestic images in color. If I were doing careful, intentional portraiture, I would probably post-process some images in black & white. Tonality (the black-white range) is more obvious in black & white. Careful adjustment of tones in post-processing can make the image quite dramatic or moody, with shadows becoming as important as brighter parts of the image. With relatively sharp, domestic images, however, color is usually the way to go. The 24-70mm lens is also big, so people notice when you point the camera their way. So they smile, pose, become self-conscious, etc. Oftentimes the results are very pleasing, if not quite at the level of deliberate portraiture. (For this photographer, this means that there may be too many distracting details in the background, or the lighting is unremarkable, or the subject hasn’t gotten used to being shot, and so looks a little stiff. When subjects are bored with the photography, I often get my best portraits. Who knew?)
The third image above — “Beatrice’s Mother” — was deliberately posed by me to recall the painting “Whistler’s Mother.” If I had had time and energy and the agreement of my daughter, I would have cleared the background of distracting details. As I say, it’s not intentional portraiture, but casual.)
To see a gallery of both color and black & white images, go here.