(The second blog post from a now month old shoot.) This go around I decided to try my hand at some night photography. As usual Leo was down to create some new material. I found a new area for us to shoot some stuff at (I had to make sure it was somewhere where we wouldn't get robbed/killed) and we strolled around played with the environment.
I'm super behind on posts so it's time to play catch up. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph my first expecting mother, Chelsea. She asked me nicely and my schedule was clear so I happily hooked her and the still in utero Blakely up with some photos. Chelsea told me it was her first time having pictures of her taken in long time time, but as always I reminded her it wasn't a big deal. Besides once my goofy butt starts rolling around on the ground and climbing up stuff to get certain shots the mood quickly lightens up. We mistimed the sunset a bit but I had portable led light with me and I was able to awkwardly hand-hold the light and shoot my camera one handed. Well improvisation is a valuable skill I'm always trying improve. I tried to give equal spotlight to both Mama Bear and the soon to be cub. Here's what we ended up with.
We are one day away from the Autumn equinox but of course it's still hot freakin' hot but it's slowing becoming more tolerable. I'm eagerly waiting for fall weather but I will miss that extra hour of daylight shooting time I'll have to give up. Weather aside with adequate planning (and knowing where to find shade) I still manage to leave the house and create some portraits. My subject these time around was lovely, long-legged Brianna. It was our first time working together and I didn't have a specific concept/theme in mind so we just chatted I captured images as I saw fit. Our first spot was at one of my favorite walls in the city before we moved to another random colorful wall. We ended up with a nice assortment of standard headshot stuff as well as playing with some poses that showed off her funky sleeves. So after an hour & a lot of laughs later we came away with these images (well these final images came after like an additional couple hrs of editing but you get the point).
This time I had Colleen swing by my studio dungeon. I finally got a hold of her after nearly a month & 1/2 since my first attempt. But luckily I caught her between trips to weddings and what not. One thing I learned in that period is the weird fact that I hardly know any young blonde women. I currently know like 4 blonde girls but can easily get a hold of dozens of brunettes. Anyway Colleen is blondish enough so we did our thing. The goal for this shoot was to create some dark high contrast images, so we went with black clothing/background to nicely contrast with her skin & hair. I used my usual studio lighting set up, which I think I finally have it down to science. I keep everything else rather simple so all the focus would be directed to my lovely subject. We ran through my usual gamut of standard poses before trying out some newer stuff. We spent about an hour (which is usually as long as my attention span lasts) and came away with some serious bangers.
Leo & I ended shooting in one of favorite types of locations...an abandoned warehouse district. We came across an abandoned car which of course we ended up using as a prop. After having our fill of this location we went around the corner to an overpass/railroad area. After trekking through 3-4 ft tall grass & up a slope we were able to get up on the tracks. We got in about 4 minutes of shooting before we were ushered off by an oncoming train.
