Father's Day Shoot

For Father's Day, instead of relaxing and watching movies, playing games, or just having some downtime, I spent the day prepping and shooting a set of portraits of my grandson (and his dad). First, I had to clean out the garage from all the yard items that were moved there the day before for my granddaughter's 3rd birthday party. Then I had to set up the backdrop, the fog machine and a set of gelled lights (one softbox with a flag, one gelled light on a boom with a 40 degree grid, another gelled light on a floor stand with a 30 degree grid, and the final gelled light on a floor stand with barndoors). Finally, I had to test and adjust the lighting.

The setup had to be right from the start, since I didn't want to unnecessarily subject my grandson to the fog, so I had my wife and daughter help me with the adjustments. Wanda was the stand in model, and my daughter operated the fog machine. I set the main exposure (the softbox) with a Sekonic L-508 light meter, then adjusted the gelled lights (height, direction and intensity) by monitoring the preview image on my digital camera (a Canon 1Ds Mark III with a 24-70 f/2.8L lens). The softbox strobe was an AB 800, the boom light was also and AB800, while the two floor lights wereWL 1600's. The softbox was triggered by a PW transceiver and the other lights triggered off optical slaves from the key light.

Here are the images with that setup:




For the remainder of the images, the gels and fog were removed, the black velvet backdrop was draped on a table, and the fire fighting gear was set up per Ryker's dad's specifications. I then added a large Photoflex reflector on the right side of the image to provide for more even lighting across the portrait. Ryker was getting a bit fussy by this point, but we cajoled him into some nice expressions:





For the final image, I pinned an American Flag to the background and lit it with a non-gelled AB800 with a 40 degree grid.


The lighting in the first two shots will be similar to what I will use for my Fire Fairy shoot.

Senior Portraits

A couple of weekends ago, I had the delightful opportunity to shoot some senior portraits for a young friend of mine. I have no idea why she chose me as her photographer, but I certainly tried to give her some great images for her final year of high school. She had to travel up to Portland from Florence to do the shoot, but fortunately, her step-dad was already attending a conference in the area, so her mom was able to drive her up the night before and we had almost a full day in which to shoot.

The shoot was quite enjoyable. She seems to be a natural at modeling and she obviously was having fun throughout the shoot, even though the weather was not very cooperative and she did get quite cool during certain portions of the shoots.

I was able to take her to several locations that I've used for my photography in the past; the PCC Rock Creek Campus, which has lots of interesting statues and structures that make great backdrops and props; an old railroad trestle with huge wooden beams; and Cathedral Park, underneath the St. John's Bridge. All the locations provided us with wonderful backdrops and she was able to have several outfit changes at each setting.

Here are some other images from our shoot:

This was taken under the St. John's Bridge

This was her "princess" shot for her mom.

Portraits

I enjoy shooting portraits. They can be very challenging images to make because a good portrait must not only be technically good, but it has to capture the personality of the person portrayed. This is quite difficult to do when working with only the head and shoulders of the subject (the classic portrait). I also find it more difficult to shoot male portraits. I think this is because, despite popular opinion, men are actually more self-conscious of their image and the whole portrait process. Or it may be that I simply have more experience with and relate better to shooting portraits of women.

The two female portraits shot here were photographed on location at a friend's house late in the afternoon of a clear August day. The soft, low light contributed to the warmth of the photograph and provided the soft shadows that help define the portraits. The ladies were posed in a open, grassy area already turned a golden brown brown by Oregon's dry summer. The background was a large stand of evergreens.

A large aperture, a long focal length and a relatively close camera to subject distance was used to minimize the depth of field and throw the background out of focus. This isolated the models to make them stand out from their surroundings. The focus point was on the subject's eyes and a shutter speed was picked that would minimize camera shake for the focal length and sensor size used for the images.

An assistant with a large white reflector provided fill light to soften the shadows even further, and an external flash set to minimum was used to provide a small catchlight in the eyes.

The models were simply asked to look natural. As you can see, one lady smiled for the camera and the other did not. This isn't so much reflective of their personalities, but of their mood during the shoot. They both had fun shooting and were pleased with the resulting photographs, but one model was far more at ease during the shoot than was the other. Neither lady is a professional model (but one has had to put up with my cameras for many, many years).



For the portrait of the couple seen above, many of the same techniques were used, but instead of a reflector, on-camera fill flash was utilized. Posing two people together isn't as easy as shooting one subject at a time, but the couple has a great dynamic and I think this shot works very well for them.