The glamorous life of a model

Candid during a portrait class at Jeff Ross’ studio last Wednesday night.

An 18th Century Lady

From our portrait class last Wednesday night. Caroline came in full 18th century dress. And when I say “full,” I mean down to her corset!

Pheenix

Pheenix was one of our volunteer models on Wednesday night. She’s a beauty.

These portraits were shot using fluorescent lights. Pulled back to show a bit of the set up.

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

36 photographs

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.

Simple Portrait

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.

The challenge of cookies

What’s that you say? Cookies? Seems simple enough. Oh yeah, sure. Oatmeal, chocolate chip, snicker-doodles. Easy-peasy.

But how do you make ~~Black Forest~~ Red Velvet cookies read as cookies and not raw hamburger? That was the challenge Jeff Ross gave me on Tuesday night.

We had a fun shoot with Nicholle, the proprietress of Homage Bakery (FB page). Best part of the night? Eating the samples when the shoot was through. To die for. I can’t wait to get some more.

Food Photography – Not something I’m going to be racing out to do, but . . .

Getting technique in one’s tool box is always important, so I’m taking a two-session food photography class through the Nevada Museum of Art. Regular readers won’t be surprised when I mention who is teaching it. None other than Jeff Ross (my lighting instructor at University of Nevada, and commercial photographer extraordinaire).

Last week we had a chef come in and we photographed four different dishes. It’s challenging. It’s not easy to make food look good. To have it pop, yet avoid weird reflections, muddy colors, etc. Tonight we are supposed to bring our images from last week’s session in for critique, and Jeff also gave us an optional homework assignment: to photograph either ice cream (making sure to get the cracks and ridges) or to photograph beer with the perfect amount of foam. With weather being in the mid-90’s lately, I wasn’t about to try ice cream, even if I did manage to get it in the freezer immediately after scooping. Not only that, I’d be too tempted to eat it instead of shooting it. So I opted for the beer challenge. The thing is, I’m not a beer drinker, so I don’t even have a beer mug! Instead I opted for an over-sized wine glass which I thought might make an interesting photograph.

I literally spent hours setting this shot up – using a stand-in wine glass. When I was finally ready to shoot the real thing, I grabbed the wine glass I had chilling in the freezer and went to town. I had to shoot fast! There’s even room for some ad copy in the upper right quarter of the photo.

Here are my shots from last week’s studio shoot.

To my delight, the chef is vegan, and he prepared two vegan options in addition to the meat entrees.

This one was tough. Trying to show the texture and shine without it looking slimy was a challenge. Diffuse the light too much and the veggies will look dull and lifeless.

Probably my favorite meal of all time. Pasta and marinara. Num!

I shot at this angle because the meatball was such a prominent feature of the dish. You still see the sauce and pasta, but to me, this meal was all about the meatball.

This one is probably my least favorite shot. I just couldn’t make this burger look special. The chef said the aioli dressing was a key feature of the dish, so we did our best to try to make it stand out. We tried it first on black plating, but the shine and reflections didn’t work. We then switched to this green plate and well, I just struggled with this one. Just as I was finishing up shooting this entree, we got the chef to toast the top bun and I’m hoping my partner got a better look than I was able to provide.