I had my homemade diffusion panel I was itching to experiment with, the Nikon SB-800 I got for Christmas has only seen some brief use, and, just last week my new Nikon D90 arrived. So I was ready to take some pictures. Luckily for me my photography friend, Eliesha, seems to have an endless supply of cute friends willing to take some of their clothes off and pose for the camera. And to spice it up a little we called up our other photog friend, Jason, and had him come shoot as well. Three photographers, one cute model, should be an interesting Saturday afternoon.

One thing I’ve learned is that the more gear you get, the harder it becomes to haul all of that gear from shoot to shoot. Backpack, lighting bag, two light stands, collapsed diffusion panel, cover for diffusion panel – it all adds up. I hate making multiple trips to the car, especially when it was like 20 F this past weekend. Stupid winter.

So, aside from me bitching about the cold and hauling all my stuff, the shoot went pretty well.  Part of it might have been all the mixed drinks our model was putting away to help her relax, but that’s besides the point.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

This one was done with my diffusion panel on camera left with Eliesha’s AlienBee B400 at 1/4 power or so.  You can see the nice soft light it created on the the right side of Elise (her right).  Nice soft transition between light and shadows.  I wanted to leave the shadow side a little dark to add a little mystery if you will, so there was no fill flash or reflector or anything.  One thing Joe McNally always says is that sometimes light is more about what you don’t light than what you do, so I tried to keep from lighting part of her face to add that drama.  I did however want to work with a rim/hair light, so I stuck my new Nikon SB-800 on a stand behind Elise on camera right snooted it to keep the light from flaring into my lens or hitting the background.  As you can see this creates some nice separation on her left and highlights her hair nicely.

Here is a setup shot for the above picture:

Time to move it to the bedroom.  We were doing all of these shots at Elisha’s house and she just so happens to have a really nice bed, so we decide to take advantage of it.  At this point Elise is pretty tipsy, so getting her to take off some clothes wasn’t too hard.

We covered her up with a black shear and just had her lay all over the bed, change positions a lot, and we moved the lights as we were shooting.  It was kinda hectic, but I managed to get a few good shoots from it.  We left the big studio lights back in the home studio and just used small flashes for these. For this shot, if I remember correctly, I had the Nikon SB-24 right behind me at 1/4 power through a small white umbrella, and then on camera right was the Nikon SB-800 through a medium white umbrella, a little further back.

Gotta love those small strobes.  So versatile and easy to use.  With just a couple of these guys you can create so many different lighting scenarios its crazy!  If you don’t have any, go get some.  And try and get out of the studio with them.  Balancing ambient with strobe is fun and you can create lots of unique pictures.  I know that’s not what I did, but it’s way too freaking cold here, and I promise I will once we have a nice day.  Do as I say not as I do!

So, a few weeks back, I was talking with one of my friends from my photography class and she mentioned that her husband out of town and she wanted to do something nice for him.  Being the typical guy that I can be sometimes, I suggested some provocative pictures.  Well, she thought it was a great idea, so I quickly got myself into a somewhat awkward situation, and it only got worse from there.

So, I go over to her house (which is awesome BTW) while her husband is gone to shoot some pictures for her.  Me, a single, male photographer, in the house of a married woman while her husband is out of town, to take some seductive pictures…slightly awkward.  Anyway, so I do the shoot and we loosen up pretty fast and we end up getting some great shots.  It was a good experience that I wanted to share.

Here is one of my favorite shots from this shoot:

I really like the way this shot turned out. I really wanted to try a shot with the slowing white background.  Luckily for me she has some Alienbees Studio lights, so I got to play with those hehe.  It turned out really well IMO.  I can see where a seamless paper background would help though.  Here is a lighting diagram I put together for this shot:

Not bad for a little free diagram maker I found on a photography site.  Should make it easy for me to explain my lighting setups in the future.  So, overall it was a good shoot.  And it kept going…

After hearing about the pictures I did, her friend wanted to do some for her husband now.  So my friend asked me to come help her shoot her friend.  So, I end up back at her place until like 1 AM helping her shoot her friend.  I was mostly an assistant the whole night, but I managed to sneak in some shooting towards the end.  Here is my favorite shot from that session:

Very nice.  I really like the way this one turned out.  I think her husband did too.  I am quite proud of myself on this one.  The lighting was so simple too.  Just one flash on camera left through an umbrella.  I threw some sepia on in Lightroom and that’s it.

And the big thing I learned from these two shoots: even though I’m taking pictures of attractive women wearing next to nothing, that’s the farthest thing from my mind.  While I’m shooting I’m focusing on my lighting, backgrounds, aperture, shutter speed, posing, etc.  There’s no time to be thinking about anything else.  Makes me feel almost…professional.