My daughter and her sweetheart came over on Sunday to help my fellow photographer, Misha, and me with our assignment to create portraits using only a single light source.
Direct light to camera left (about 45 degree). Light fill at camera right using white poster board.
Direct light 90 degree to Ryan – split lighting.
Diffused light to camera right. No fill.
Diffused light to camera right with fill on left from white poster board
Alison
I’m going through my files and being brutal about deleting stuff that will never see the light of day and is just hogging up space on my hard drive. But this one from February 2013 caught my eye. Keeping and sharing.
Taken from the front yard of my parent’s home.
Back in September 2011, I fell into photography. Back story: I wanted to take some classes at UNR (University of Nevada – Reno), and I figured it would be a snap. After all, I had a degree and had therefore met the prerequisites for most classes. Or so I thought. Because of my student status (Graduate Special), the school would not evaluate my transcripts to determine if I’d met the prerequisite for taking a class. So here I was, admitted to the school, but my hands tied for taking anything that required that I’d even met the barest of requirements to take a class! But there was a class I could take while I got everything straightened out: ART 141, Introduction to Digital Photography. And so I signed up.
Our first assignment, designed to get us used to using our cameras in manual mode, was to shoot 36 images in a row, as though we were shooting a roll of film. That meant, NO deleting, and no editing beyond converting to black and white. Here is my project. There is nothing spectacular about these photographs, but they are a slice of my life.
The first few images were taken at the Reno Air Races on Friday, September 16th. This was the day of the horrible crash and Sweetie and I were in the thick of it.
This is where I put my camera away for the day. I had plans to do more shooting the next day. And then, during the last race of the day, all hell broke loose.*
We spent all day Saturday at home. Crying mostly. On Sunday we needed an escape, so we put the dogs in the car and headed up to Spooner Lake. The walk helped. There was an “art” event going on along the trail.
Monday night on the university grounds.
And to finish up the roll, as I was down to my final two days, I shot in my office and around the grounds.
This is my favorite photo of the set.
At the duck pond near my work.
Back on the grounds at work.
*If any of you are interested in reading about our experience with the crash and the journey we took, here is a link to all my posts at my other blog.
http://bluelyon.wordpress.com/category/home-life/reno-air-races/
My latest post is first, so you’ll have to go back to the first post on September 15, 2011 and read in order from there.
I’ve signed up again for a portrait lighting class through the Nevada Museum of Art, with Jeff Ross as our instructor. About half of the class are photographers who’ve taken classes with Jeff before. On Wednesday night we all got to know each other and did some hands-on work with single source lighting. We learned (or reviewed) concepts such as quality of light, inverse square law, broad and short lighting, and got tips on what to take in consideration when determining how to light your subject.
Nina and I will be participating in our local Bark for Life on Sunday, May 4th, to benefit the American Cancer Society. If you can spare a few dollars, would you please donate to this worthy cause? Click on this link, or Nina’s photo below.
Seriously, how can you say no to her?
He’s eighteen months old now! I did my best to crop Sweetie out of this shot, but the kid is a whirling dervish and I had to capture him as best I could this past Easter Sunday.
Cutie
Dandelions are suddenly everywhere.
Original
Cropped
Carissa Snedeker Photography 
