Happy Valentine’s Day! I’m going to keep this post pretty brief because it’s keeping me from spending time with my girlfriend, Josi, but I wanted to take a few minutes and share a couple of pictures from a recent session I did with Josi’s friend, Wing.

We decided to head downtown at night to get some cool urban night shots, which is cool, but the bad part about this was the fact that it was freezing out. Since it was so cold, and since we were shooting at night, I decided to stick with my 50mm f/1.8 for low-light shooting and a single light stand with a Nikon SB-600 and a Westcott 28″ Apollo softbox. I didn’t want to lug around a bunch of gear in the cold, so I kept it simple and made what I brought with me work.

We started with a fun kissy-face shot, above, and then moved on to a couple shot as Wing’s boyfriend came along for moral support. Here they are in the doorway of this cool old building downtown:

He’s quite a bit taller than her, which made it hard to get a good shot of them together, but I think this one turned out pretty well.

After that we headed to the top of one of the parking garages downtown (as seen in this post) to finish up and I snapped another, sexier, kissy-face shot of Wing in a nice evening dress:

At this point we both had had enough of the cold and decided to call it quits for the evening, but not before I snapped over 200 shots, which was way more than I had anticipated shooting. I’ve got a few others I’ll share as I get them edited.

I’ve also got another shoot coming up this week that I’m excited about. Hopefully I can get everything edited by next Sunday so that I can share them with you then. I think you’ll like them.

A few weeks ago I attended Don Giannatti‘s Lighting Essentials workshop up in St. Louis, Missouri and I wanted to share some images and my thoughts about the workshop with everyone.  This is my first ever, but hopefully not last, photography workshop I’ve attended.  I’ve been to some classes and Strobist meetups and the like, but never a full blown workshop like this, so I wasn’t so sure what to expect.

Before the workshop I spoke with Don many times trying to help him get things setup in St. Louis (even though I’m about 3.5 hours away from St. Louis) so we could have a great workshop.  Don was quick to respond to most of my emails, tweets, etc. which impressed me early on.  It seems like most people that “make it big” these days aren’t too keen on interacting with the little people like me.  So when I meet someone like Don that takes the time to talk to and help out someone like me, that’s a great thing.  I love all of the professionals that give back so much to the community and attending this workshop with Don felt like just that.

My friend and photographer, Jason, drove up to the workshop with me and shortly after checking into our hotel we went and picked up Don from his hotel.  Right from the start I could tell Don had done this a few times and was eager to share his wealth of knowledge with anyone willing to listen.  And willing I was!

We headed to downtown St. Louis for some random shooting and then a dinner meet-and-greet with all of the photographers attending the workshop.  I think there were 6 of us in total, plus Don, so it was a small, intimate learning environment.  After dinner we just sat around and talking photography for a while: the business of photography, bad experiences, good experiences, etc.  Lots of information to absorb and process and the workshop hadn’t even started yet!

The next morning we were up early and ready for the workshop to start around 8:30am at Don’s hotel.  Due to some misunderstandings we didn’t get this cool warehouse location I was hoping for, so we just made due with the hotel for the day.

The morning started out as an intro to the workshop and talking about lighting from different perspectives, a little bit about gear, some technical information with regards to lighting and such.  After that we went right in to shooting some simple, one light portraits in the hotel room with nothing more than a small flash and a few reflectors and the results were impressive.  Since I’ve gotten into the whole off-camera lighting thing I’d pretty much stopped using my reflector all together, but now I think I’m going to start trying to work it in more.

After a few quick demonstrations Don set us loose with the models to shoot around the hotel.  We broke up into 2 groups and headed out, shooting around the hotel, outside, anywhere we could find, really.  Don would come around and ask us why we were doing certain things to help us make sure we understand why we are doing what we are doing, and he would plant the seeds for shot ideas as he went.  For example:

This shot was a combination of Don’s idea and a happy accident.  Don was booming a flash at full power overhead and just out of the frame on camera right but we still weren’t getting enough power (f/20 is hard for small flashes), so we added a second flash at full power, but we aimed it a little low and it missed the umbrella and gave us some hard light from camera left and created a nice look to this picture. Interesting hard/soft combo I’ll have to try to work in some more.

We went on for the rest of the afternoon like this and then headed out to dinner for another night of stories and information.  Lots of good conversation and tidbits of knowledge to pick out throughout the night.  I headed back to the hotel and went through the pictures from the day and then passed out, ready for round 2 the next morning.

Day was the on-location portion of the workshop – I enjoyed this part more than the first day since I like to consider myself a location-based photographer.  We met downtown and talked about shooting in less than ideal conditions and the best places to position the subject for good light.  We walked around as a group and did some location lighting together, just to see the different results of blending ambient with strobe. Then we learned how to “calibrate” our strobes, which is probably one of the biggest things I took away from the workshop.  Most of my lighting was trial and error up until this point, but now I know at what distance my flashes give me f/8 at 1/8 power and how much I lose when using modifiers and so on, so I can be much more accurate with my location lighting.

After that it was off to practice some more.  I got to play with the new Speedlight Pro Kit Beauty Dish, which I loved.  Got some pretty cool shots with it – might have to pick one of those up when they are available here in the States so I don’t have to lug around my DIY flower pot beauty dish.

We shot around in groups again in this area for a while and then we packed up and headed to a more industrial area of St. Louis to finish up the second day.  We did the group thing some more with Don coming around sharing his vast amounts of wisdom with everyone and then he showed me the second thing I really took away from the workshop: using Photoshop to increase the power of your strobes.  It’s a fairly simple concept – I have no idea why I never thought of it before.  Probably my “get it right in the camera” mentality I’ve been using.

Sometimes the shot you want requires your strobes to be in the frame to get the power you need – so shoot two frames, one with and without the lights, then combine them.  Simple as that!  You can read Don’s in-depth guide on this technique over at ProPhotoResource.com.  Here’s the shot I did using this technique:

It’s not my favorite shot, but it’s still pretty cool.  I’ll definitely be trying to work this in more, which means I should probably get a decent tripod.  Good thing Christmas is getting close.

We finished up the second day and talked for a while and then headed our separate ways.  Overall it was a really good experience.  I learned a lot and made some new friends.  We went through so much in those 2 days that it’s hard for me to remember it all.  Good thing Don provides us with workbooks and DVDs to help reinforce the ideas and concepts we learned.  Here are a couple more of my favorite shots from the workshop:

It was a great workshop and definitely worth the price for everything you get.  I’d do it again in a heart beat.

Since I’ve been back I’ve kept in touch with Don and he even did a portfolio review with me over the phone, which I really appreciated since we didn’t get time to do it during the workshop.  It’s good to get a pro’s opinion on your work every now and then and he pointed out some things I need to improve on, which is great since I’m still very early in my (hopefully) career as a photographer.

Don was a great teacher and a great guy in general – hopefully we stay in touch.  I strongly suggest anyone thinking about taking his workshop to take the plunge and do it.  You’ll learn so much and have a great time while doing it.  It’s worth it, trust me.

If you haven’t checked out the rest of my shots from the workshop you can see them on my Flickr page.

I finally got around to getting Jessica and Sa’dia their CDs from this shoot so I figured it should blog about it too, ya know, for good measure.  We did the shoot almost a month ago, but we’ve all been busy so we haven’t had time to meet up until now – it’s NOT because I’m a slacker.  Well, I am a slacker, but usually not when it comes to my pictures.  Anyway…

I just wanted to share a couple of pictures from this shoot.  I had two goals when I agreed to this shoot – shoot most of it at night and try some new things.  The picture above pretty much sums it up.  I think we had a lot of fun trying new things, which is what all three of us wanted.  When I sent this shot above to the two models I said it represents the shoot because it is “fun, different, and unique.”  Works for me.  I don’t have setup shots for these pics, but I’ll quickly run through the setups, though they are pretty easy to figure out.  The one above was at ISO 800 and 1/10 sec to bleed in the ambient and still let me shoot at f/8.  The girls are lit by a single shoot-through umbrella camera left and the flare is created by an Sb-600 at low power handheld by my buddy, Aaron.

Now on to a couple shots of each girl by themselves.  Continuing with the flare concept we’ve got Jess:

If you haven’t noticed by now I kinda dig the whole flare thing, whether its a sun flare or flash flare.  So I tried to work it into some of my night shots by using my SB-600 instead of the sun.  It creates a nice rim/separation light and also creates that beautiful flare.  The key light was the SB-800 camera left in the Westcott Apollo 28″ softbox.  I think I’m going to order a 60″ convertible umbrella in the near future to play with.  I want to do some full body stuff and most of my current modifiers don’t spread light that much.

Now, here is Sa’dia by herself:

I love the way this one turned out.  I like the warm colors in the background and the soft light up front.  Combined I think it creates a very compelling, inviting image.  Plus, that look.  Her eyes just draw you right in.  Very nice and very simple.  Sometimes it’s the simple shots that turn out the best over the complex ones.

That’s it for this post.  I’ll have another one soon as I just got back from Don Giannatti‘s Lighting Essentials workshop and I have a bunch of pictures from that to share.  Stay tuned!

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!

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!

I love environmental portraits.  There’s just something about seeing a subject and it’s surroundings that really draws me in.  These are the kind of shots I really want to get better at taking.  This post is about a recent shot I did for Josi’s friend, Jonathan, who is an aspiring filmmaker.  His film “Roberto and the Robot” just debut here in Springfield at a local film festival.  He wanted some post-grad shots to use for social networking and the like.

I really like the shot above.  To me is has a very Joe McNally-ish feel to it.  I think it’s the dark greens from the sodium vapor lights down the alley. I enhanced the green just for some effect.  Joe would have done this with 20 speedlights down there – I went with the simpler approach of a single SB-800 camera left bouncing off of a 43″ reflective umbrella.  This was my first ever night-only shoot, so I was using slow shutter speeds, higher ISOs, and rear-curtain sync to blend ambient street/alley light with my one flash to create some interesting looks, like the shot above.

This next shot, or shots per se, really has be in a bind.  It’s the same shot, just one in color and one in black and white, and I love both of them.  The black and white makes it different enough that I can’t pick which one I like more.  Take a look:

See what I mean?  The lighting for this shot was the SB-800 in the Lumiquest SBIII camera left and right above Job to create a soft/hard light on his face that falls off nicely and creates a look that I like to call “looking for inspiration.”  I love the different colors that the sodium vapor street lights can create – in this case a very nice, warm orange/red combo.  I love the alleys here in Springfield for shots like this.

For the last series of shots we ended up at the Mud House, a local coffee shop that Jon works at spends a lot of his time at, so it was only fitting that we did some shooting there.  We had gotten some really good shots already, so I wanted to experiment some, so I went outside and shot through the window at Jon sitting inside:

I think this shot really sums up Jon’s personality (or at least how I perceived him after visiting with him during this shoot): working late at night on some ideas, at his place of work, enjoying some coffee.  That poster there on the left of the frame is a promo poster for his movie as well, so we snuck that in there as a little added treat.  I like the way the lamp on the table burns in with the flash, creating a nice contrast of light on his face and how the lettering on the window creates a sort-of frame-within-a-frame.  Speaking of flash, it was inside, camera right, handheld by my V.A.L. Josi, still through the SBIII.  It was triggered via CLS from the pop-up on my D90.  Rather than using manual flash control I was using TTL to try and get a better feel for how it works.  CLS is really a great system and I can’t wait to mess with it more as I add more CLS-enabled flashes.

That’s it from this shoot.  I got lots of great and unique shots from it and I hope Jon is as happy with them as I am.  Let me know what you think.

Samantha

Samantha is the step-mom of my photog friend Jason‘s kids’ classmate.  Tough to follow?  Yeah, it’s hard for me to explain too.  But anyway, he met her, she’s modeled before, so we setup a time for Jason and I to go out and shoot her one afternoon.  Jason wanted to head downtown and do some comparisons of my lighting gear to his, so that’s what we did.

The first stop was these cool blue doors in one of the alleyways here in Springfield.  I’ve shot on these before and they work great, so it was pretty easy to knock out some shots there.

Great smile, nice breeze.  Easy shot.  Shot with my Nikon SB-800 in my Westcott Apollo 28″ Softbox.  We were using Cactus triggers since Jason shoots Olympus (for now…I think he wants to switch to Nikon, mwahahaha).  It would have been just as easy, if not easier with CLS.

We walked around and did some more shooting until we finally ended at this awesome blue building down by Jordan Valley Park.  I’d seen it before but never really thought about shooting there.  Now it’s going to be one of my go-to locations for nice, contrasty shots (as you’ll see later).  The blue garage door works great with someone wearing yellow.

Unfortunately Samantha wasn’t wearing yellow, but the purple work nice with the door none-the-less.  This was another one light shot, either with my Westcott Apollo 28″ softbox or with Jason’s Alzo 15″ softbox; I can’t remember.  It was in close, right out of frame on camera left.  Either one would produce that nice soft light with the specular behind the model at that distance.  That’s a trick I picked up from, yup, you guessed it, David Hobby over at Strobist.  Nice little trick for using speculars to your advantage when shooting against a reflective surface.

Kristen

This one is easier to follow: she’s the friend of Aaron, one of my co-workers.  He’s mentioned that she’s also modeled before and she’s also pretty cute, which works great for my summer/cute theme we are going with in the post, so I texted her and set up this shoot.  Being super excited about my new blue building location, I wanted to go back there with someone with a yellow dress and sure enough, Kristen was happy to help.

The yellow and the blue really create a nice look.  Kristen’s great smile and pose help a lot too.  I left the specular of to the side of this one, just because I could.  Lit with the Apollo softbox and my SB-800.  Triggered via CLS this time, though.

Ok, so we’ve done a lot of blue.  3 shots in one post on blue.  I’m tired of blue, for now, so let’s move on to the last shot I want to share.  This one is much different from the 3 above – more dark/edgy/urban.  I’ve been looking (unsuccessfully) for an abandon warehouse setting around here that I could use for a photo shoot, but I found something close enough that with the right lighting could fake it pretty well.

In the corner of the parking garage right by the park we were shooting at there is this little cluster of controls, pipes, etc. that I figured with the right light could really create the look I was going for.  So that’s what I set out to do.

This one was slightly more difficult to pull off, but I think it was well worth the effort.  For the backlight I used a Vivitar 285HV on 1/16 power through a bright red gel to create that red, factory-like look on the background.  I wanted Kristen to look warmer, like there might be some kind of boiler or something close by, so I gelled the SB-800 with either 1/4 or 1/2 cut of CTO and stuck it back inside the Apollo softbox and feathered it away from here slightly to keep the light soft, yet edgy, while controlling the spill on the background.  I think it turned out well.  I hope to do many more shots like this in the future.

That’s it for now.  Stay tuned for more summer shots, plus I’m also working on the 2nd assignment for Strobist Boot Camp 2, so there will be a post for that soon.

And, at least for me, they aren’t terribly hard to do.  To get some practice and work on my portfolio I recently shot one of my bosses’ daughter for her senior pics for really, really cheap compared to what a lot of seniors are paying these days.  So I took my camera (Canon Rebel XTI at the time), one flash (Vivitar 285HV) with stand and modifiers, my kit lens (18-55m f3.5-5.6) and the great little Canon 50mm f/1.8 (I need to get the equivalent of this lens for my D70s) and headed downtown with her and her mom for a few hours and the end result was some awesome pictures (well, I think they are awesome).

Here are a couple of my favorites from the shoot and a few details about them.

This one was done with the flash on camera right through an umbrella with a full CTO gel and my white balance set to Tungsten.  Such an awesome trick…I don’t know what I’d do without it.  I love how it warms one side of her, but quickly changes to a cool tint from the Tungsten WB as the light falls off across her face.  And with the sunglasses it kind of reminds me of a shot you’d see in Hollywood somewhere.

One of my photog friends showed me this alley one weekend when we were downtown scouting locations and I decided I just had to use it.  Unfortunately for me the sun wasn’t even close to shooting some light down this alley when we were doing the shoot.  No biggie, I can make my own sun.  I stuck my flash high and directly behind me on full power through an umbrella with a 1/2 (or maybe 3/4) CTO gel on it and viola!  Fake sun.  Very easy to do.  There were a few shots I did of her where I created the sun wherever I needed it.

This last one is probably my favorite from the whole shoot.  This was one of the poses she sent me that she liked so I decided to do my best to make it look good for her.  Again the setup on this one is so easy.  Flash through an umbrella on camera right, probably 1/4 or 1/2 power, slightly above and at the magical 45 degree angle.  That’s it.  So easy and look at the results.  I did soften this one up some and add the vignette for some effect, but overall it was a very easy image to create.

All of that with one light and some modifiers and diffusers.  That’s the Strobist way.  And for good reason – it works!  Easy and light to carry all around downtown with me and easy to setup and change when needed.  These senior pictures are much better than the ones I did for my brother back in August (these were taken in early November), but back then I was still learning flash, so most of his were just ambient light with a reflector.  One portable light makes so much difference.

If you haven’t taken the time to learn about off-camera lighting, now is the time to start.  It will change the way you think about photography, I promise!