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!

I know it’s not Sunday yet, but I’m going to be out of town this weekend for Halloween and I’ll be busy on Sunday when we get back.  Plus, I’m really excited about these images so I just couldn’t wait any longer to share them with you!

Kristen mentioned doing a sports shoot a while back so this past week we got together and made it happen.  We went to the stadium at our (her present and my past) college hoping the stadium lights would be on, but, they weren’t, so we had to make the best with what we had.  Plus, when we got there the Ultimate Frisbee teams were playing on the field, so we had to shoot off to the side for a while.

When she mentioned the sports shoot this (the shot above) was one of the first shots that came to my mind.  I wanted a close-up portrait off to one side lit with some hard light and a little background.  Then I planned to heavily post-process the image to give it a hard, gritty, high-contrast, Sports Illustrated kind of look.  Mission accomplished.

The shot was a 2-light setup – the SB600 in the Lumiquest SBIII on camera left to create a semi-soft/hard key light and then I added in the SB800 zoomed to 105mm on back camera right for the hard rim/separation light.  It created a nice contrasty light that gave me a lot of room to play during post-production.  And play I did.  This looks is a combination of several adjustments in Lightroom 3 Beta followed by some layering/masking in Photoshop.  I really dig this look for shots like this.

We used the same lighting setup for this shot, I just backed out a little farther.  I used the same lens for all of these shots – the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 – so all of my composition adjustments had to be done by foot.  I processed this one a little differently to leave a little more color in so it would look different compared to the first shot.  Gotta have variety.

After we were done with these shots the field had opened up so we were free to move on and setup the next few shots.  I really wanted shots of the field in the background, but without the stadium lights being on there was nothing I could do, so I improvised to make sure I lit up enough of the field around Kristen to give the images some context while letting the background go black.

Before anyone says anything, yes, I know she’s facing the wrong way.  I wanted to get the numbers in the shot a little bit and have the yard line lead the eyes down the middle.  It’s wrong, but it’s right for what I wanted.  I went with a hard/soft light combo for this one.  I had the SB600 on camera right through a white umbrella to give her a base fill and also light up the field around her and then I just added in the SB800 on the opposite side and bare to brighten her up and add some contrast to the shot.  I used a similar post-processing technique as the shots above, but I didn’t go as extreme on the details like I did the first 2 shots.

Again I used the same light setup as the previous shot in order to knock out a few different poses pretty quickly.  She wanted to do the Heisman pose, so I lined her up on the numbers on the field just to keep the ground interesting.  Snapped a few shots while she held the pose and we were done. Same post-processing as the shot above.

For the final shot we wanted to do an action shot, but being able to successfully line everything up involved with a shot like that is no easy task, so we took the easy way out.  Fix it in post!

I had her lay on the ground and act like she was diving for the ball – combine that with a slightly skewed camera angle and some easy Photoshop tricks I think we have a fairly compelling action shot.  She nailed the pose and the look pretty well, which made it easier.  I used the same post-processing tricks as before plus I added a little bit of a motion blur to make the image feel a little more interesting. I like it.

Not only is this week’s Project 52 shot a few days early, you also get 5 shots instead of 1.  This is more of what I’d like to be doing – set up a shoot with a theme/concept and come away with 3 to 5 great shots.  We did pretty well on this one; I was very happy with the outcome.  I’m working on another concept shot for the next few weeks so once that happens I should hopefully have another set of good images to share.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.  Please visit the Flickr page for each shot (just click on the image) and leave your comments and feedback so I know what you like and don’t like.  Have a Happy Halloween!