The past few days have been busy. As you’re reading this I’m off to do another Lightroom class for the day. Yesterday a portrait session with a mother and daughter. Mom was learning a little more about off camera lighting, and her daughter was playing the role of “model” for both of us! Great day.
Since Wednesday I’ve had folks rolling through the print studio / portrait studio. June was horribly slow….to the point of me wondering if I should just close and be done with it. Along comes July and I’m busy again. Busy enough to make rent, pay myself a little, and chuckle at my own lack of faith. Who knows what this week holds.
The most recent photo sessions couldn’t be more different. 1 session was totally setting up for composites. The other….no composting whatsoever. Just shooting and lighting. Both sessions were extremely fun, and I think the clients enjoyed themselves as much as I did.
Single 580EX II with a 24" Lastolite softbox. I'm too far camera right for a wrapping light drop off. Shot mid day, manual settings.
The above shot isn’t exactly what I’d wanted, but it’s still a pretty nice image. We were shooting and I was making a point about light location to Francis (mom of our model). I moved further to camera right to demonstrate the light drop off. If I’d only been a few feet left we would have had a lighter drop off with a nice soft light. Still, we demonstrated a point and mom shot from the better location. We actually shot together for the day, and some pretty amazing portraits were pulled out of this one on one class session. Can’t wait to see what they do with the images. The above image is on location, no compositing, no HDR, etc, etc.
My earlier portrait work for the week was done with Zach. We decided to do a few composites. You know, just to be different. Zach plays tennis, so I thought we’d go with some themed shooting. There are several composites from the court, but my favorite is one of those, “Who would have thought” locations.
As I’ve been building backgrounds for composites I’ve been shooting everything. One location? The parking garage on Granite. I don’t like all the open window spots on the exterior of the building. So I took one interior shot, duplicated it, flipped it on itself to build a better garage, and voila! Cool location. You can say this one is an “Ode to Joel Grimes” shot. Just to see how it would work out. It worked out pretty good!
Zach was shot in studio. 3 light setup. One main light (the Alien Bee 800), and two side lights (the 430EXII’s). He was then clipped out of a gray background, toned up, and moved into the HDR’d garage scene. One last filter was added from OnOne’s PhotoTools and we called it a day.
So, there ya go. That’s where I’ve been. Now…..off to spend a day on Lightroom!