August was a pretty busy month for me – photography wise. And by August I really mean just this one week in August, but let’s not nit-pick. Anyway, I had two senior sessions lined up in one week – Abby on Tuesday (seen above) and Chris on Wednesday (below). Abby is the niece of my co-worker’s friend and Chris is the son of the VP of my department. So the pressure was really on for me to do a good job (not that it isn’t always, but more so than usual this time).
I started with Abby who was pretty nervous about getting her pictures taken, but who isn’t? All she said was that she doesn’t want the usual cheesy senior portraits, so I did my best to avoid the cheese.
We found this spot with red and blue walls, so I milked it pretty hard. I loved the contrast between the red and blue, plus the green scarf that Abby was wearing just added to that contrast. I stuck her on this old bench here and used a simple one-light setup. I was trying the collapsed silver umbrella for my light source around here and I found it worked pretty well. For the shot above I had it high on camera left around 1/4 power – nothing too fancy. I slowed down my shutter speed to let some ambient bleed in for a little fill, since it was too dark and contrasty when it was only flash lit.
Just to the left of this bench was more red and cool door/window/lamp combination that I used for several pictures as well. I really wanted to incorporate the lamp in a creative way, so I had Abby climb up on another bench and lean against the window looking off in the distance. The lamp was on in the middle of the day, so I slowed my shutter speed down to burn in some lamp light then I threw a 1/2 CTO gel on my SB-800 on camera right to add some fill and make the scene look like it was lit by the lamp. I’m pretty happy with the results:
Definitely not your typical senior picture – at least not any senior pictures I’ve seen recently. In keeping with the “no cheese” philosophy of this shoot we found this cool, old wooden staircase nearby that we turned into a few interesting shots. One of my favorites from this outfit/location combo is this one:
We did several different angles on these stairs but this one ended up being one of my favorites. I love how the light looks like the sun peaking through a small window, creating light just where I wanted it and no where else. You’d be hard pressed to know that this image was taken outside around 6pm with the sun nice and bright around the corner. This was lit with the SB-800 in the Westcott 28″ Apollo softbox directly overhead and feathered slightly. My friend Aaron came with on this shoot (since that’s how I got this job in the first place) and I used him as a carbon-based boom stand here.
There were several other great shots from this session, but I don’t want to throw all of them at you, so here are a few of my favorites.
The next day after shooting Abby I had a session with Chris, the son of the VP of my department. Talk about creating some stress. Then, on top of that, his dad (and mom) came with during the whole shoot. Yikes! But, his dad is pretty cool, so it wasn’t too bad – it definitely kept me slightly stressed, but at the same time made me kick it up a notch throughout the shoot.
Chris was a really interesting and great kid with an awesome personality, so it was my job to show that in his senior pictures.
The first shot is the “I’m confident and a badass” shot. We started out blazing and just kept it going from there. I stole borrowed this idea from an old On Assignment post over at Strobist – using the sun and a flash to side light the subject and then use a gridded/snooted flash for some fill. I love shots like this – I dunno why. My only gripe with this shot is the shadow under his chin – I should have raised the fill light up some, but other than that it’s a pretty sweet shot.
Next, we toned it down a bit. Chris is big into the theater scene – singing and performing in various plays and productions at the local theaters here in Springfield, so I wanted to try and incorporate that into some senior pictures. Luckily, Chris knows his way around the theaters and got us into one of the downtown theaters for a few shots:
Another great shot! I love the casual, simple feel to this shot, but at the same time it says so much about Chris’ personality. It shows his confidence in a theater setting, which is right up his alley. There was a rehearsal going on up on stage, so we stayed in back and I turned the beeps on my flash of to cause as little of a distraction as possible. In a setting like this you need quick and simple, yet elegant light. A single SB-800 in a shoot through umbrella provided the light for this shot.
After this we went back outside for some more “I’m a badass” shots. The sun happened to be in a good spot as we walked by so I had to take advantage of it. You all should know by now that I’m a big fan of solar flare, so here we go:
Solar flare. Check. Sunglasses. Check. Deep, serious gaze. Check. Confidence and badassery (that should be a word if it isn’t already). Not much else to say other than overpowering the sun is hard with speedlights. I really need to get something like an Alienbee B800 with a Vagabond battery pack for shots like this. Some stronger to conquer that sun. Need more power! As it is I light this shot with my SB-800 and SB-600 at full power right next to each other. Worked out ok, but limits me in the flexibility/creativity department. If I could should this with a softbox – that would rock!
To round at this session we needed a guitar. Again, lucky for me, Chris brought one with him. Not only does he do the theater, but he’s a musician as well, so we HAD to shoot some of that along with everything else:
In this shot, Chris gives off the vibe “Yeah, I can do it all” but at the same time the acoustic guitar says “Yeah, I can slow it down when I want to…” It’s a nice pairing of his personality traits – and it really works well in this shot. I really bumped up the contrast to kill the background and focus on Chris in post-processing. I’m not sure what else to say – I think the shot speaks for itself. Lit with a single SB-800 in a silver umbrella camera right.
Ok, that’s it for these back-to-back seniors. I really like doing senior shots – wish I would have done some more this summer/fall. That’s my own fault though for not marketing myself at all. These two are just via word-of-mouth. That’s the next big thing for me to work on.
I’ve got some more pictures ready for another blog post later this week, so watch for that. Plus, I’m heading to St. Louis this weekend for a 2-day lighting workshop hosted by Don Giannatti. Really looking forward to that. Watch for a blog post after I get back!