Well, if you didn’t know by now, I moved to Denver, Colorado a couple weeks ago. Today I finally finished cleaning and unpacking, so it’s starting to feel more like home now. I snapped the the first picture of this post at a little carnival in the parking lot across the street from my new apartment. Josi and I went down there and messed around. I wanted to play around with the new HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 and this is what I got. Still need to mess with it more…

Anyway, the real reason for this post is to talk about a few shoots that I did before I left that I haven’t gotten around to posting about yet. I set up a few shoots before I knew I was moving that I’m going to talk about here, plus once people found out I was moving I managed to cram a couple more shoots in right before I left that I’ll talk about later.

So, before I waste any more time, let’s jump into a few shoots:

Truett and the Traitors

I decided I want to try my hand at band photography so one of my friends hooks me up with a local band they know called Truett and the Traitors. We met downtown one afternoon and created several different looks within a small area. This shoot was a real challenge for me since it was pretty bright out, I was using small strobes, and I had to light four people, so it definitely tested my skills.

For this shot we ducked inside of a shaded alley so I could shoot at a fairly reasonable f/8, but I still had to light 4 people, so I busted out my 60″ umbrella and stuck both an SB-800 and SB-600 at full power through it to get the proper exposure on the group. I purposefully left a lot of negative space at the top so the band could use this for a promo poster or something.

I had to go for my “signature” sunburst shot since the sun was so apparent in a cloudless sky, so we climbed up on the footbridge over the railroad tracks and crammed ourselves in tight for this one. I was shooting at f/18 to get the sky blue and the starburst sun effect, so I used bare strobes, one at full power to camera left for the key light and then one above the camera at 1/2 power for some on-axis fill. This is a technique I need to play with more to create images like this since I don’t see myself getting a 1200 w/s lighting setup in the near future, so it’ll be hard, bare speedlights for me for overpowering the sun for the time being.

Raluca

Once I found out my friend Raluca was leaving for Arizona I knew I had to get together with her for one last shoot before she left. We’d worked together in the past, but while I was still learning, so I wanted to shoot her one last time and deliver her some awesome pictures now that I’ve gotten much better than the first time I shot her. We headed to the top of one of the parking garages downtown and got to work.

Raluca loves her little Scion tC, so I wanted to do a shoot with her and her car. This was the first shot we did, featuring her in the foreground and her car in the background. I double-process the RAW file, once for the background and once for the foreground, and then combined them in Photoshop and did my final edits. The lighting for this shot was a single speedlight at full power camera right (just out of frame) into a white umbrella. Everything else was ambient lit.

The sun was peaking around these awesome clouds and I knew I just had to shoot into it so I stuck Raluca in front of it and lit her with a bare speedlight at full power to hit the f/22 I was shooting at. I used the pop-up flash on my D90 to try and provide a small amount of on-axis fill. Again I double processed the RAW file and combined them in Photoshop.

Next we decided to do a more suggestive shot, so we had her straddle the front of her car while I shot into the sun and clouds once again. The clouds filled up most of the sky so I could shoot at f/8, which allowed me to light Raluca with my 28″ Westcott Apollo softbox from the right. Same post-processing as before.

Once the sun was mostly down we went all out and busted out the swimsuit and shot into the nice, deep blue evening sky. I meant to have her turn her headlights on for this shot but totally forgot, so I added them in post-production. Since the sun was mostly gone I was shooting at f/4 at ISO 400, so lighting wasn’t an issue; this one was lit with a single flash into a reflective umbrella camera right at 1/4 power.

Jessica

I worked with Jessica once in the past and we decided we wanted to do another shoot together and we settled on a fitness-oriented shoot. I want to give these shots more of a commercial look to them, so I kept that in mind while I shot and edited.

A nice one-light shot with the sun peaking through the trees in the background created this shot. A little post-production and this could be a good add for either Nike or some bottled water company.

This one felt a little “senior-portraity” at first but I think we managed to pull of a nice commercial-looking image. Would be a great Nike ad, IMO. This was a 2-light setup: key light was camera left, a speedlight through a white umbrella and then a bare speedlight back camera right for a rim/hair light.

For the last shot I wanted Jessica to get wet, so I had her slowly pour her bottle of water into her mouth and all over herself. I stuck a light back camera right to imitate the sun light in order to light up the drops splashing over her and then lit her with a shoot-through umbrella from camera left. I ended up combining around 5 different exposure from this series to get the water in all of the places I wanted it. In the end it turned out pretty well, though I think it might have went a little better if I just had her pour the water on her face instead of into her mouth.

Hallway Glamour/Fashion Shoot

I wanted to try to create some fashion/glamour shots in the hallway so I had Josi practice her makeup and set up a make-shift studio in my hallway. Here is the setup shot:

I used two speedlights through my homemade diffusion panel to create a pure white background and then lit Josi from the front with a partially collapsed silver umbrella, or as Zack Arias calls it, the poor man’s softbox. Here are the results:

Not too bad for a narrow hallway and a little creativity!

So, that’s some of the stuff I was doing before I left. I still have a few more shoots to talk about that all happened the weekend before I left, so those are still to come. Some pretty good stuff though, so be watching for it!

Stay tuned as I continue my photographic adventure in beautiful Colorado…

For a while now I’ve had this idea to do a shoot with a girl dressed up all cute and sexy playing video games – maybe it’s because I’m a big nerd at heart or maybe it’s because I thought lots of guys would love the images. For whatever reason, I was determined to do this shoot, and then I finally found the right girl on Model Mayhem – she was cute and nerdy, so it was perfect. After some back and forth we finally settled on a date for the shoot, but we didn’t know where we were going to shoot yet. Then she had this great idea…

Here in Springfield there is this neat little arcade downtown called 1984, which is owned by a bunch of friends that had collected several vintage arcade machines over the years that decided to open up a place, charge a cover, and let people have free reign over these classic games like 1942, Pac-Man, and Spy Hunter. She suggested that we contact the owner and see if he would be willing to let us shoot there.  I figured it was a long shot, but I gave him a call and he was more than happy to let us shoot there. In fact, he was pretty cool overall after we met him the night of the shoot.

We had the place to ourselves because we shot there on one of the nights where they aren’t open, so it was perfect. The owner, Devin, went out of his way to make the shoot happen and to make it fun. He gave our model the “I’m to sexy for my bow” shirt seen in the first shot to wear for the shoot and let her keep it afterwards. He helped us turn on the machines and let us shoot whatever we want, wherever we want. He even busted out his camera and shot some behind-the-scenes footage of us doing our thing, which was cool. All of that in exchange for some prints, which I happily ordered for him and personally delivered to Devin, along with our model, Jessica (along with some business cards featuring one of the images from the shoot to hand out).

The shot above is the shot I used for the business cards.

I’ll talk briefly about my lighting setup for these shots and work my way down the post.

The first shot was actually the last one we did, and the most complicated. It was a three-light setup with a Nikon SB-800 behind the camera into my 60″ umbrella for some fill, a Nikon SB-600 camera right through a white umbrella for the main light, and a Nikon SB-600 bare to cast some light on the first on the wall (and it blew out the side of the register, which I should have caught). Pretty much all of these shots had some slower shutter speeds and higher ISOs to let some of the ambient arcade machine light bleed into the image.

The second shot was a single light into a collapsed silver umbrella on camera left – I love the reflection it created, but at the same time I wish I would have had a polarizing filter to kill the reflection and see more of the pinball machine.  The third shot is the exact same setup, just a different pose/composition combination.

These next two shots were a two-light cross light setup, with the SB-800 clamped to one of the machines through a Lumiquest SBIII camera right and an SB-600 with a Honl grid back camera left from some rim/seperation.

The last shot I’m going to talk about was actually the first one we did. I stuck her into this old Star Wars arcade machine and added some fill from the top via a clamped SB-600 into a silver umbrella and then I stuck the SB-800 through the Lumiquest SBIII for the key light:

The idea was to look like she was being lit from the machine itself – I think it works pretty well.

I think this shoot turned out really well and I’d like to do a follow-up session with her that’s more home and console oriented.  I’ve got some cool ideas for that shoot as well.

I hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as I did shooting it!

Some of the shots are shots I’ve shown before, but I also want to share a few new ones we took just for the calendar, so here is a preview of the 2010 Kristen Calendar!

February

June

August

November

The rest were either too revealing or not as exciting as these. It took a long time to put this together, even with re-using some shots that we had done in the past. I think we did 3 or 4 separate shoots to get the missing months and then we tried different ideas for each month. Then there was all of the editing and post-production to be done. We spent a lot of time together working on this, so I hope her boyfriend appreciates it.

If you want to know more about how a shot was lit you can click the image to go to it’s Flickr page and read more about it. This is definitely something I’d like to offer to other people, but because of the amount of time and planning involved it wouldn’t be something cheap. If you conservatively plan for an hour per month for shooting, you’re at 12 hours already, plus a few hours for planning, and then probably at least another hour per month for post-production and you’re looking at about a 30 hour project, minimum. At commercial photographer rates you’re looking at about 3-4 days worth of creative fees, which could run anywhere from $500/day to $10,000/day, or if I were to just charge a very nice hourly rate of $20/hour you’re still looking at $600 minimum, or a more realistic hourly rate of $50 or more would push it up to $1,500 or more. I’d settle for a happy medium around $1000, depending on the shoots you would want.

So, it wouldn’t be a cheap project/present, but it would definitely be unique. A one-of-a-kind calendar for that special someone in your life. I’d definitely be willing to do it again, so if you’re interested in getting a calendar made and are willing to put in the time and effort and can afford it, shoot me an email and we can make it happen!

Sounds like an interesting album title.  And if it was, in fact, an album title, this shot above would be the album cover.  This is a quick shot I grabbed in between fountains when Kristen had a little time to dry off.  I love trying to overpower the sun with little speedlights.  I’ve been doing it more and more.  For this one I used both my Nikon SB-800 and SB-600 at full power through a white umbrella – and it was JUST out of the frame camera left, in fact, I think I had to crop this one because it was in the shot.  Trying to get f/18 out of flashes is asking a lot, but they performed admirably.

Before I go any further I need to tell a little back story about this shoot. The first shoot I did with Kristen ended at one of these fountains, but unfortunately for us we got there too late and it had already shut off for the night, so we both left empty handed.  Well, we got some great shots from the rest of the shoot, but we missed out on that fountain shot, so we decided to do a new shoot dedicated to ONLY fountains.

The first fountain we shot was at Founder’s Park here in Springfield.  Unfortunately for us, right before we got there some guy cut his foot open real bad and bled all over the place – they called an ambulance and everything.  So, we were pretty hesitant to do much in the fountain, but we managed to grab a few shots real quick without having to get into the water much – just staying at the edges and we ended up with one of my favorites from the shoot:

The sun was still pretty high and bright, so we were avoiding it like the plague and using one SB-800 to create our own main light.  I think it worked out pretty well.  I’m working on doing some stuff to this one in Photoshop, so once I get that done I’ll try and remember to share with you guys.

After we bailed from the dangers of this fountain we headed up to the square where they have this really cool fountain.  I’d seen some cool shots done here so I figured it was my turn to see what I could do.  Last time I was shooting with flash around water I almost lost my SB-800, so I was being extra careful this time.  Kristen’s friend Amanda came with us on the shoot so I had her standing in the fountain holding my light stand to make sure the wind didn’t blow it in. That would have been bad.

We tried all kinds of different poses in this fountain, but the one that really stood out to me is this one:

I’m not sure what it is – the pose? The look?  But something about this picture really draws me in.  It feels like it should be in a magazine (to me at least).  I have a few other shots that have her legs in them too, but even without them I feel this is a more powerful shot.

The last fountain for the day was in Jordan Valley Park, where the first shot of this post was taken.  The main fountain there runs on a timer, so while we were waiting I grabbed the shot above.  This is one of those fountains that shoots water way far up in the air, so I moved my flash back pretty far and zoomed it in so I could still light up Kristen and keep my flash from getting wet.  I was using it bare, no modifiers, but Kristen has the body and face to handle it, so I wasn’t worried.  Here’s what we got:

Pretty cool.  I really like how the water kind of wraps around her and brings your eyes right to the center of the picture.  I used a slow enough shutter speed to smooth out the water from the fountain but then that flick of light from the flash really sharpens Kristen to make a sweet picture.

That’s it for this shoot.  I think it was a lot of fun for the both of us, and I really enjoyed have a fairly solid concept to work with for this shoot.  I’d like to come up with a solid personal project for me to work on focusing around a good, solid concept, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

Case in point.  This shot wasn’t planned and was completely random, but it turned out pretty sweet none-the-less.  Jason, Eliesha, and myself were downtown doing a mini-group shoot with Nikki and Christie.  I was setting up some lights for when Nikki arrived and this guy walked by and was like “Yo man! Take my picture!” and I couldn’t resist.  He hopped in and told me I only get one shot, so I made some final tweaks to my settings when he posed for me and I snapped my one shot. A little post-processing in Lightroom and I’d say it turned out pretty good.

Now, let’s look at a few pictures from the planned shoot…

First up is Christie.  She’s a recent High School grad that Jason and Eliesha met one weekend while doing a big group shoot with the local camera club. We had her come down so we could do some practicing.

This was one of the shots she wanted to do.  She wanted to go up in the parking garage and look out over the new Hollywood Theater so along with those I grabbed some lower shots of her just looking off in the distance.  I really like shots like this…not sure why.  All of the shots we did during this shoot were done in or around this parking garage (the same garage where I shot my Week 3 series).

While I was waiting for Jason and Eliesha to finish up with Nikki downstairs I stuck Christie into the stairwell and had some fun with the sun:

I really like the lighting, composition, and colors in this shot.  I’m a big fan of the solar flares lately too.  I continue to try and work them into my shots when I can.  Using speedlights to overpower the sun like this is no easy task, especially when trying to diffuse it like I was here.  I think I’ll try some more bare flash shots when using the sun for a flare in the future and see how those turn out.

Right before sunset we all met up on top of the garage to get some shots of the city and sunset in the background.

After the sun was mostly gone I took advantage of the deep blue sky and threw a two-light setup at Christie doing a hard/soft combo:

This was a little while after the sun was gone, so I was working pretty fast, dropping my shutter speed every few shots to keep up.  This one was at 1/25 at ISO 200, so it was before I had to start bumping the ISO up, but it’s slow enough you can see a little ghosting in the shot.  The hard/soft crosslight combo works well here though and I dig the contrast in colors between her outfit and the sky.

Time for Nikki.

Nikki is a local singer/songwriter that Jason found and had her come down to shoot with us at the same time we were shooting with Christie, so we traded off models and photographers throughout the shoot to give everyone good exposure to everyone else and to make sure we all got a variety of shots.

My favorites of Nikki are all from the last part of the shoot during sunset and after the sun was gone.

Right before the sun dipped past the horizon I got this shot.  Another one were I was using both speedlights to overpower the sun to get the cool flare.  I was ONLY at around f/10 here so I didn’t have to blast them at full power, but it definitely strained the batteries.  It was worth it though to get a cool shot like this.

Another great shot of Nikki is this one:

Once the sun was gone we got this really cool color gradient in the sky that worked great as a background.  By boosting the colors it also brought out the blue in Nikki’s eyes that really make this picture pop.  The lighting on this one was a new setup (to me) but I liked the way it turned out so I may use it again in the future.  One flash on either side of her at about a 45 degree angle created an interesting hard light that worked well for her.

The last shot I got of Nikki was after the sun was all the way gone and all we had were the city lights down below.  I had Nikki leave over the railing and lit her from the side to get a nice balance of flash and ambient:

There were several from this series that I liked, but I went with this one as it was a nice balance of foreground and background and her eyes are just so engaging in this shot.  It’s hard NOT to stare into them.  The bokeh from the large aperture works great here too!

That’s it for this shoot.  I’m almost done catching up with blog posts for past shoots.  Watch for a couple more soon!