How I Spent my Sunday, Part 2

Daughter came over to help me with my lighting assignment – portrait using a continuous light source and a flash/strobe. On the advice of our instructor, I shot her with a much longer lens than the previous week. I’m quite pleased with the results.

Ali doing her best Blue Steel and trying not to laugh. See “Zoolander”

Lovely!

And one in black and white . . .

And here is the best of the motion blur effect I tried to replicate. Given the ambient light in the room, it wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped it would be. Still, it has a bit of an ethereal, Mona Lisa quality to it. This was shot at 100 ISO, 1/13s at f/3.5. After pressing the shutter I zoomed in to create the blur and halo around her face. Next time I’ll do this in a darker room. I did not block off the windows as carefully as I usually do.

Speedlight Class

We had fun today! We moved all over the Nevada Museum of Art with our models. This is Tony. we were on the fourth floor. Speedlight to camera right shooting through white umbrella. White reflector providing fill to camera left. The lovely gleam in the elevator doors was from the window directly behind us.

Can you take good portraits with just a single speedlight? Yes, you can.

Tommy

Jacey – by the beautiful window in the lobby (to camera left). Speedlight through white umbrella to camera right for fill.

Darius – also by the window (camera right) with reflected light from speedlight to camera left for fill.

Darius and Jacey

On the roof with sunlight at back of our models.

Spencer

Tony and Viola. In open shade with speedlight through white umbrella at camera left.

Can I recreate this at home?

I am pretty sure I can. I’ll find out on Sunday. I’ve got the lights, the shower curtain, and the ability.

From Wednesday night’s portrait class in Jeff Ross’ studio.

Lighting Practice – Single source lighting – Alison

I think I like this one of my daughter is my favorite of the bunch from our shoot on Sunday. I’m going to try this again with a different lens and a little more of a smile.

Direct light over her shoulder and reflected into her face using a white poster board

Sierra alone . . .

From our shoot on Sunday.

Edited version of original photograph

Sierra and Mariya

Some of you have already met Mariya from previous shoots. Today she, and her friend, Sierra, came over to do some studio work. Here are a few from today’s session. I’m still working through them, so I will be posting more soon.

Katie and Cathy

I had the honor of doing a very special shoot yesterday. Katie is my co-worker and friend. Her mom. Cathy, has cancer. Today was a good day. This week was a good week. We took advantage. We had fun. Aren’t they gorgeous?

More to come, even some from the chaotic pet shoot afterward. Hint, what happens when you mix four canines and three women (one of whom fancies herself a photographer?

Inspiration

Inspired by Karen McRae’s post, Trichoto(me), I played with layering some self-portraits I’ve taken. My camera does not allow me to do multiple exposures in camera, so I did these in Photoshop. This was a fun experiment this morning and something I’ll want to keep working on.

In this image, I pulled the pensive layer to 25% opacity and did some strategic erasing to emphasize my upturned face in the original layer.