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Articles Tagged with: studio

Senior Portrait in Charleston

I recently started my senior portraits campaign, and Haley, who is my 2012 model and ambassador, had her senior portrait sessions recently. To showcase a range of what I’m doing this year, I shot three different locations. Above is a shot at Folly Beach, and directly below is a shot in downtown Charleston, SC. I also did a few studio shots as well.

On location shoots, I like to capture an edgier and dramatic look. In the studio though, I tend to favor a high-key look like this:

A new product that I’m going to start including in my senior portrait packages is a Facebook banner. I used one of Haley’s shots to demonstrate this on the JWNPhoto Facebook Page.

Part of the fun of these shoots is in the experience. One moment that I’m sure will stand out for Haley and her father during this shoot was when we hijacked a Porsche!

As we were walking down Chisolm Street, I was making small talk with Haley and I said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if that lady let us take a shot using her car as a prop?” and then I proceeded to do just that. I love this shot because the car’s owner is in the background trying to get out of the way, but she really adds to the whole thing 😉

We also did some more traditional portraits just to have a little diversity.

Here’s a slideshow of all of her photos:

You can also view them on Facebook here and here, or on Flickr.

Now is the time to get your senior portraits made, so let’s book a session now. Time is running out on my current promotion, so contact me here.

Shaking It Up With Haiden

This weekend was a busy weekend for me – I had three different shoots, including a birthday party for the niece of one of my dearest clients. Haiden celebrated her birthday with a “Shake It Up” theme, and I was brought on to setup a photo shoot to capture these junior celebrities 😉

My “studio” was setup on the side of a Sullivan’s Island beach house porch. I had an array of hats and accessories for the kids to dress up in. You can see in the photo above that I created the coloring for the background using colored gels on a pair of speedlight flashes. The red gelled light on the right is also making use of the infamous beer coozie snoot. I also added some graphics to the finished portraits to finish them off:

The kids were really into it. I was so impressed with how well these kids played up to the camera. The shots I made were filled with energy and it really made the time fly (even if I had to listen to the likes of Selena Gomez for two hours)!

I also shot the event to capture some of the fun for the family and friends. The weather was perfect for photography – overcast early day light! The rain gods surely held out for this little girl, as the minute the party ended, the sky opened up!

I shot this last shot of the party goers just as the rain started to fall. These kids were so awesome – they even helped me bring my gear to the car!

Happy 7th Birthday Haiden!

Visualizing Rebecca

Rebecca is the latest friend to come to the home studio for a portrait session, and man is she amazing to photograph. It’s becoming quickly apparent that it’s impossible to get bored with portraiture when you have amazing people to work with who are creative and are game for anything. This time around, I had several shots pre-visualized before we began. The first one is this natural light portrait using windows as the light source. We took advantage of the fading afternoon light and went for a bedroom scene (in my dining room).

I put a bed sheet on an ottoman to act as a bed. The problem was that I forgot how tall Rebecca is, and any shot that showed her whole body on the ottoman looked quite strange. It made her look like she was in a toddler’s bed, which is less than sexy when you think about it. No problem, I just shot tighter on her and got an implied photo. Sexy’s back!

Next, I wanted to showcase her amazing long auburn hair. We broke out the industrial fan and had her whipping her head from front to back to get her hair to catch the wind like a sail.

My goal was to have her flip her head enough times until she passed out. Not really, but I’m sure it felt like that to her. This kind of shot is all about timing. Hit the shutter at the perfect time while the hair is spread out and her face doesn’t look like someone who’s moving up and down vigorously. That’s not an easy shot to get without a lot of attempts. Saying that she’s a trooper is an understatement.

This is my final pre-visualized shot. I wanted to get this angle showing the piano and guitar on one side of the wall and Rebecca on the other side. This is one shot – not a diptych. I was inspired to use some of my old records in it after a friend of mine from back in my punk rock musician days posted vintage photos of girls with records on his Facebook page. Thanks for the inspiration Frank!

Katie, who works with Rebecca and is also just plain awesome, was helping out with the shoot and got drafted into a similar shot. I’m blessed to know such beautiful people! This shot rocks almost as hard as Katie at an Avett Brothers show at the North Charleston Coliseum (I’m still indebted because she invited me into the box seats with her friends at that show).

The above shot was a suggestion of Rebecca’s, which was to shoot her on a magenta background to compliment a green dress she wanted to wear. With such big bright blue eyes and the rich colors of her dress, her hair, and the background (I used a speedlight with a magenta gel on it to get that), I wanted to get a big smiling portrait. Rebecca’s such a fun girl that it’s more than easy to get a natural reaction out of her.

This was the final frame of the shoot. I love to do a head shot like this at the end of a shoot because at that point the person has been coached so much that they just easily connect with the camera. They’re all warmed up and comfortable, and it’s also quite a slow-down from the rest of the shoot. I just use the modeling lights and a 50mm lens, and really tone it down. I can fire off multiple shots while talking and complimenting the subject on the work we just did, and it really makes for a beautiful expression.

As I do this more, I’m really seeing the importance of vision over technical ability. You need the technical ability for sure, but without the vision, making a good photo becomes a game of luck. Why take only chances? The photo at the top of this post is an example of free-styling it. It might be one of my favorite shots that I’ve made in a long time, but it really was a lucky shot that I got while we were working out some fashion poses. Her expression is amazing and it was a decisive moment that was lost in the very next frame of the same setup. The blowing hair shot though, which was heavily planned and worked on, was destined to succeed because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like before I took the shot. Sure, luck is a great thing, but it’s not predictable. Hard work and visualization can be.

Kicking Ass With Krista

I met Krista soon after we moved to Charleston back in the mid oughts. She was working at the local gym as a personal trainer. She approached my wife and I and asked us if we want a free personal training session, to which we happily obliged. I can honestly say that in a fight, not only would she kick my ass, she’d run circles around me while doing it. But, beyond the fact that she’s built like a UFC fighter, she’s also a very beautiful woman.

I invited Krista over to the studio with the goal of demonstrating how dynamic she is. Together I think we swung for the fences and hit one out of the park. We started out doing some fashiony type poses.

Then she put on her workout clothes as I went for an edgier and athletic look to compliment her. She’s a pro at this, so all I really had to do was be there, but when working with any model it’s truly a partnership. You collaborate with the talent and they put their trust in you to capture them at the peak of their performance. In a situation like this where someone spends their life doing something and you’re in charge of conveying that to an audience, it’s important to understand how to use your craft to capture it effectively.

Even though she had a much busier task of watching five kids all by herself during the shoot, my wife Amy still was able to put her fingerprint on this shoot by suggesting that Krista bring her wedding dress. Only problem was, when Krista got married she was wearing the dress for two (she was pregnant, slowpoke). Ahh, the versatility of spring clamps to the rescue. Those things are only second to gaffers tape in importance in your photographer’s tool kit. With this look, I wanted drama, both in Krista’s look and with lighting.

Finally, we went total glam as I set up some speedlights behind her to get a ton of lens flare and backlighting. I totally think that experimenting and playing around after you get the shots you initially wanted to get leads to some of the best shots you’ll make. The model is loose, your photographer juices are flowing, and things just seem to click.

After that, I handed Krista the camera and asked her to make my new Facebook profile picture. She’s just getting into photography and has taken a few lessons, so I was more than happy to get her to turn the camera on me. I think she got it 😉

Building

Isn’t she dramatic? Oh, the trials and tribulations of a pre-teen. Actually, most of the pictures of my daughter I took were of extremely goofy faces and the ridiculous looks she likes to give me when I use her as my test model. I happened to get a couple of in-between shots where she wasn’t ready with a smirk 😉 Here’s one with her grinning:

Of course, my son couldn’t let her take all of the glory…

So the point of these test shots was to try out my new giant softbox from Paul C. Buff, which is being powered by an AlienBees B800 monolight. I’ve been primarily a speedlight kind of guy for a long time, only renting bigger lights for special occasions. I’ve recently decided to expand my photography and some of the things I’m going to start shooting are more in the fashion, portraiture, and editorial style of work. That means proper studio lighting. Now, I’m not going to jump into a Profoto system right off the bat, and since I’ve used AlienBees in the past, I’ve decided to start with a couple of B800’s.

*Warning* Here comes a bunch of technical talk…

Here are the reasons I chose to go with this particular model: The AlienBees line has a 6 full f/stop range on their lights, so the highest power B1600 can only be stopped down to 20 Ws, while the B800 can go down to 10 Ws at 1/32nd power. I’ll rarely (if ever) need to shoot at full power on the B800 for the applications I’m intending them for, but for shooting wide open like I did in the two shots of my daughter above, I need lower power. Even with the B800 I had to lower the ISO to 100 (the native ISO on my Nikon is 200) to shoot at f/2.8. The shot of my son was at f/8, and you can see there is a lot more detail in that shot overall – it’s a totally different look. I like to have options easily available without having to throw light eating filters on my lens or lights. In this beach wedding shot taken in harsh mid-day sunlight, I had rented a B1600 and never went over half-power, so I don’t see myself needing the extra daylight-crushing power just yet.

The best choice of the Paul C. Buff line of lights for versatility is the Einstein, but since I’m trying to gradually build up, I know that the B800 will be versatile enough for almost 1/2 the price. In the future I hope to add an Einstein as my main light and then move the Bees to fill and/or accent lights, but for now I’m very happy with the range of the B800.

I also had one very important and extremely technical choice to make when getting the AlienBees lights. Which color to get? I really like the white since it’s different enough without looking goofy – I saw someone using a pink one lately and it was a bit much for my taste 😉 I didn’t want to go with black since the Einsteins are only available in black and I want to be able to quickly differentiate between the different models in the future. Telling a less knowledgeable assistant to move the white light is easier than calling out a model number!