Location Shoot - Billiards Room with Natasha

For my last shoot I left the safe and controlled environment of the studio and did a location shoot at a billiard room with model Natasha. As soon as I stepped in I knew it was going to be one of the more challenging lighting situations that I have dealt with in awhile. This place had bright fluorescent lighting all around, tungsten lights above the billiard tables and neon in some areas of the ceiling. Also behind the bar area there was a very flat fluorescent light. So for billiard area shots I wanted to get some of the ambient from the lights above the tables to maintain the look of lit billiard tables. Solution was to do a three light setup and just feather in enough ambient light by playing with the shutter speed till I had the look I wanted. For the bar area I pretty much did away with any ambient and did it all with a three flash setup. One flash had a warm gel on it to light the bottles behind the bar and then Natasha was lit with a softbox as the key light and a shoot through umbrella for fill.

Crazy Colors of Fall

The amazing colors of fall have the leaves on this tree almost looking as if they are on fire!

Katie and Cody - Model Shoot - Alright with the light

First thing is always to try and get the light just right. The great thing about off camera flash is that you can position the light pretty much anywhere you want and use just the right intensity of light to portray a certain mood or look. Here are some of the early shots were I am trying to work the light using a shoot through umbrella.

Photography Course Class #2

Tonight was the second class of the photography course I am taking. Each of the students brought in a small assortment of their own personal photographs and the instructor offered his thoughts on them as did some of the students. It was really interesting to see the creativity in some of the shots and fun way to learn about composition and what works and what doesn't. We concluded tonight's class with some shooting in black and white to understand exposure and how to shoot in full manual mode, AV mode and TV mode. Above are a few shots from the class of some lighted props and one of my instructor.