So, it’s November here in Missouri, but I don’t think the weather knows that.  We had a beautiful 70+ F weekend here, which is far from the norm. Hell, we had a few days a couple weeks ago that were almost below freezing.  But, I’m not one to complain.  I loved the weather this weekend and I’d love to live somewhere where it’ like this all the time.  That’s neither here nor there, though.  I did take advantage of this beautiful weather, though. Josi, my wonderful girlfriend, who I did not have to force in any way whatsoever, and I, along with my photog friend Jason, headed out to a nice, empty field around sunset today to make the best of this beautiful Sunday.

Our plan was to shoot into the sun with some fast shutter speeds and small apertures, which requires lots of light, so we set up two SB-600′s on a stand to give us the power we need, but as soon as we did that the sun dipped behind some clouds and only peeked it’s head out for a few minutes, so our setup was a little overkill, but we left it like that so we could take advantage of it as soon as the sun came back out.

For the shot above we had Josi crouching in this nice, golden tall grass with the lights into a silver umbrella high camera left.  I wanted it to feel like a nice, warm, golden sunset, but since the sun was hiding, I just flipped over to a Cloudy White Balance and then took it even warmer in Lightroom to give it that late afternoon sunset feel.

Josi’s eyes are very engaging in this shot and I love her serious, almost sad look.  She knows that this day is almost over it and with it the weather is going to start turning colder and gloomier as winter rolls in, and her look expresses that emotion nicely.

This shot has a similar feel to the one above.  Instead of looking into the sun, and into the warmth of summer’s last breath, Josi is looking away, looking to the grey skies and coldness that comes with winter just around the corner.  Actually, I have no idea if that’s what she’s doing, but that’s the emotion I’m seeing in this picture.  A slight bit of warmth to one side and then darkness on the other.  The grey skies with a hint of blue behind her give off the same feeling.  The slight blue gives the hint of summer, but it’s quickly lost in the sea of grey clouds.

Once of the biggest things I’ve read lately is that your pictures have to be able to stand on their own, so my goal with this session was to tell a little bit of a story and hopefully create some images that other people can look at and feel the story without me having to explain them.  Granted, I just explained them above, but hopefully you saw them and felt something before I explained them.

These are a nice segue to another shot that I would like to do in the near future.  I’m calling it “Winter Approaches” and I’ve got a pretty solid idea for it, just need the right weather and then I’ll get out and shoot it.  Watch for it here within the next few weeks!