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.

Model Shoot - Brittany

I had the pleasure this past weekend to work with Brittany and also makeup artist Jazmin. Both of them were very professional and fun to work with. I had originally thought about an outdoor shoot but because of the forecast for rain on our shoot day we opted for the studio instead but as luck would have it the better part of the day was actually really sunny. Fortunately though the studio has these huge windows at one end that lets in some amazing natural light when the sun is in the right place. I've been wanting to challenge myself a bit more and leave the safety of the studio and start doing more location lighting and mixing strobes with natural light and ambient light. For part of this session I tried some shots next to the windows and mixed in some fill flash just enough to blend with the natural light but to also get those catch lights in the eyes.

Long Exposure - Shooting Star

I was experimenting a few weeks ago and headed out one evening just as the sun was setting to do some long exposure shots. Both of the pictures below were shot at f/11 with the top one at about two minutes and the bottom one at roughly three minutes. I did it by using bulb mode in manual for the shutter speed and then timed it with my watch. For both photos I switched to tungsten for the white balance to get a very blue shift in color but the top photo was then also color shifted in Photoshop for a different effect. If you look closely in the bottom photo you see I might have captured a shooting star or at least that's what the light trail looks like to me. A happy accident.

Model Shoot - Vienna

This is a model shoot I did a few weekends ago with Vienna. We had a hairstylist, Ivy and makeup artist Melissa helping out on the shoot as well. We had three different looks that day and tried some natural lighting as well as some work with flashes. Vienna wanted to do a sexy but innocent nerdy look and brought along a fake apple that had me fooled that it was real right up until I actually picked it up. Here are a few shots from the session.

New York City - Black and White

Went to New York City this past Easter weekend to visit a friend and of course I wouldn't have missed this opportunity to capture some photos. I know there are millions of photos out there of New York so I didn't want to just take the usual ones that I am sure everyone comes back from there with. The problem is that I only really had two days to do it and on one of those days I was met with rain and wind. So what do you do? Make the best of it! I decided to shoot these all mostly in black and white on the camera so that I could focus more on the tonality and composition of the photos and less on the actual colors. Once I imported them into Lightroom of course they came back out as RAW color images. I chose to convert them into black and white in Lightroom plus crop some of them to 1x1. I think it gives them more of a timeless and nostalgic feel.

Model Shoot - Flo

I had the chance a few weekends ago to work with Flo and makeup artist Bella. Flo showed up already in makeup and had this really interesting design on her face. At first I thought it was just a pretty random design that Bella had drawn on Flo's face but if you looked closely you could see that it was actually her name. Pretty cool! We went through a few makeup and wardrobe changes throughout our shoot and Flo was amazing with her posing and facial expressions. One of the best I have worked with so far I might add. Before I knew it I had filled up an entire compact flash card, something I have never done before in a single session. I usually average anywhere from 100 to 120 shots per hour of straight shooting so after a two or three hour shoot I have somewhere close to 450 frames. At the end of the session with Flo after having to change flash cards I had over 700 frames. Here is just a very small sampling from that session.