Grace, one of the owners of Charleston’s Eco Fitness and Blue Turtle Yoga studios is also a photographer who’s new to studio lighting so she asked me to help her out with a portrait session with Mark, one of her studio’s Yoga instructors. Grace’s idea was to capture some images of her staff members with an item that helps to define them. Above, Mark’s posing with a dragon fruit, and below he’s with his harmonium.

Of course, I needed to shoot Grace. I told her to give me her “sexy librarian” and this is what she gave me:

And here’s Grace in action with Amy assisting. This was a shot of the mirror behind us in the yoga studio.:

These were all shot with my new Nikon D800 with the 85mm 1.8G lens. I cannot stress how amazing this combination is for portraiture. Looking at the full resolution files is just stunning. The clarity is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before from a digital camera. Just tack sharp, amazing contrast, and full of detail. It’s truly a game changer for me. A new camera or lens doesn’t change my style, my lighting, or any of my other abilities. What they do do is expand my ability to capture the images more like the way I actually see them. I can achieve a great look with nothing but my iPhone, but I can’t achieve the level of professional quality that is possible with the D800. Grace was using a kit 18-105 lens with her D7000 (which is another fantastic camera), and then I let her use my 24-70 f/2.8 and the difference in quality was quite obvious even on her camera’s LCD screen. I’m not big on pixel peeping, but when you’re editing portraits in Photoshop with such high resolution files, the quality of lens is obvious – and it makes your job easier as there’s a lot less work to do in post.

Here’s one last shot I want to show you. It’s Amy, who was assisting us on the shoot today. She was very playful in front of the camera, and this was about as serious as I could get her 😉