Staying in the Game, practice makes perfect.

Currently I am hobbling around on crutches. With a couple of shoots in the near future for Swimsuit Illustrated Magazine, I hope that it is nothing serious and I can be back on my feet in no time. We'll see Monday when I get an MRI. While having some down time, I started looking through some old images from past shoots just to see what was in my "throw away" files. These three images were in that file. I decided to edit them now just to have something to do. Photography is just like sports, you have to practice. If you find yourself not shooting for some reason, grab some images out of your throw away files and edit them. It will give you something to do and keep your skills up.

This is actress Allie Desantis, She came to my home for some headshots. Actors always need current headshots. Allie has pretty much perfect skin. I had very few clicks with the healing brush on her images, but I did try a different Topaz Adjust Filter out to see how I liked it. I probably would not do that on a paying job. I would just stick to what I know, get the job done and get paid, but since these were in my throw away file, and I have nothing to do anyway, I experimented. 

The filter gave her skin just a little bit of glow. You probably would never notice the difference, but I do. I'm picky like that. I am pleased with the results. Now I'll probably go watch some tutorials on youtube. I think you can learn anything on youtube.

Portrait Photography with a Little Sorcery.

Yesterday I drug one of my good friends, Jessica out to do a little experimenting. I wanted to try out a new technique for my portrait photography and play around with the images in photoshop. Well, she was game so it was on. After about 30 mins, I decided that the "new" technique was not for me and went right back to what I know. I guess you can teach on old dog new tricks, but only if he wants to learn. I enjoy manipulating the light, Jessica calls it "sorcery". In the above image, the sun is actually on Jessica's right side, yet it looks it's coming from her left. I accomplished this by putting a remote triggered SB600 with an orange gel over her left shoulder.  I am however making a real effort to shoot more natural light, and three of these images were taken with no flash. 

This is a natural light image taken under a bridge. Her face has an interesting shadow on her left because the sun is bouncing off the ground onto the right side of her face. The diagonal lines made by the bridge structure also make this photograph more interesting. (Photo Tip)

I love this image. It's another natural light image. She looks kinda "sassy". She has a small amount of shadow on her left side again, but this time it's coming from the sun reflecting off a condo across the street.

Who doesn't like a giant concrete ball? Sunlight sorcery again thanks to a gel'd flash.

and again

Last shot from under the bridge is another natural light image. The result is a beautiful soft light.

Head Shots for an Actress, One Background, Three looks

Actress Evelyn Nardo recently contacted me about shooting some head shots for her. I wanted to give her different looks without having to do a lot of changing my backdrops, so I did all three of these shots on white seamless paper. It's not that hard to do and it's a good trick to have up your sleeve when doing portrait photography. In the above shot, I have my camera shutter speed set to 1/200 sec, and my ISO at 200 (that's pretty much where I start on most jobs), my aperture is set to f/11, white balance is set to Flash. I held my Sekonic L-358 light meter under her chin and fired my main light (one AlienBees B800)while adjusting for a f/11 reading on the meter. I adjusted my background lights (two AlienBees B800's) for a light meter reading of F/16. This caused the background to go almost perfectly white. A little clean up was required in Photoshop.

In the next shot, I turned off the background lights, bumped my aperture up to f/16 and adjusted my main light accordingly. This made the background go very dark giving this portrait a totally different look.

In this last portrait, I changed my white balance to incandescent, Adjusted my ISO to 800, shutter speed to 1/125 sec., and my aperture to F3.2 I turned my main light's flash off and just used the modeling lamp. This made the background go blue, and gives the photograph a soft feel. There you have it, three totally different portrait looks that can be achieved pretty quickly without the hassle of changing that paper.