How'd I do That?

 I took this photograph of Cassy Cameron about 90 minutes before Sunset.  It was submitted to, and published by Swimsuit Illustrated Magazine. So what made this image stand out to the editor?  See the sun peeking over the sea oats? Normally, Cassy would be a dark silhouette in this image. I could have exposed the image for a blue sky. My exposure  probably would have been around 1/200 sec. f/16 at ISO 200. I probably would have set my AlienBees B800 at about 1/4 power and it would have looked pretty good. I didn't want it to look pretty good. I wanted it to look DRAMATIC. I wanted the editor to look at it and say "Dang, that looks different." So how did I do it? I set my aperture to f/22 and my shutter speed to 1/250 sec. That made the beautiful afternoon sky go pretty dark. Now I had to pump a lot of power out of my AlienBees B800 flash to expose her properly, but that was OK, I knew it would do it shooting through a Beauty Dish. It wouldn't do it through an umbrella. I digress, but I know this because I set my flash up in my living room one rainy day and metered what it would do from a distance of six feet, shooting through each of my light modifiers. Now I don't have to waste time on location figuring out what my equipment will do. Anyhow, that's how I did it, and the important thing is it made the cut and it got published. If you don't understand all these terms and fractions, that's OK, I didn't at first either. I am completely self taught and I did it by reading, watching tutorials on You Tube and experimenting. Here are a couple more images from that shoot for your viewing pleasure. They made the cut too and were published. The one with her laying on the sand with the bird in the water was taken using the exact same technique. Enjoy!

A New Year's Resolution, a Few Days Late.

Today's the 9th, I never seem to do things the conventional way. My resolution this year is to do more natural light photography. For the past few years I have been relying heavily on my strobes. I really like using them in direct sunlight with the sun at the subjects back. Sometimes I overlook a location that has great natural lighting because of an idea for a shoot I have planned already. The above image was taken with no flash, no reflector, no nothing except a beautiful model and light bouncing off a wall. For the bottom image, I used a reflector only. Stayed tuned for more natural light images. I am shooting Stephanie this Sunday and I plan on using almost all natural light. 

Goose Bumps!!!

Monday afternoon I photographed Amanda. She needed a few shots for her agency and I was free that afternoon. Little did we know we were gonna be dealing with an Artic Blast. We had high winds and low temps. It was howling, two sandbags did not keep the lightstand down. Luckily my daughter Haleigh was there and held the stand for me. Amanda is so naturally beautiful and easy to photograph. She is enthusiastic and very fun. I loved every minute of it. And talk about a trooper, I had a coat on and was still a little chilly, she never complained. I did see her shivering a little bit though. I hope we can shoot together again in the near future.