How to make your Bridal Portraits POP!

This is a bridal portrait I did for Jessica. I'm pretty proud of it. Not only is she a gorgeous bride, but I pretty much nailed this photograph. I usually place my subject or model with the sun behind them and light their front with a flash. Well the sun had pretty much gone down by this time so I took a Nikon SB600, stuck it on a monopod, and jammed it behind the handrail on the bridge. I aimed it at the back of her head and it looks just like the sun is backlighting her hair. Her front is lit with an AlienBees B800. I do this all the time when shooting portraits. 

Here are two images side by side so that you can see the difference it makes. The image on the left looks pretty good, and I would like it if I didn't see the image on the right. I think it looks so much better having her hair backlit. If you really want to make your portraits stand out, stick a light behind your subjects head. 

Keep reading my blog and I'll try to keep giving out Photography Tips from time to time to help you become a better photographer. Feel free to comment if you have any questions or you just wanna say hi!

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.

My Day with the Debutante : Editorial Photography

A couple of weeks ago I spent a rainy Sunday morning with one of my all time favorite Beauty Queens, Stephanie Ziajka. If you follow the pageants, you may recognize her as Miss Tampa Bay. Not only is she beautiful, but she's also smart, very smart, and patient. She's helping me on my web presence and funny little things like key wording. She's quite a blogger also. She writes about fashion, beauty and make up, skin care, and just about anything else that a young Southern woman needs to know. You can view her blog at: http://www.thediaryofadebutante.com/. Check out her blog and drop her a line to let her know that I sent you. 

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!

Sometimes you just shoot for the fun of it!

Lately when I take my camera out, it is for something to do with my business. I am either working, practicing, or experimenting with a new lighting setup. It's easy to forget why I started my journey down the long winding road of photography. I LOVE taking pictures, not just snapping away at everything I see, but taking meaningful pictures with a purpose. My sister Susan and her family came to see me last Summer and I got one of my cameras out of the bag for some pool time. It wasn't one of my Nikon D300S's that I use for work, but a Nikon D40X, still a nice camera. While in the water with my camera about 2 inches from certain death, I had a blast taking pics of my niece and nephew as they played in the pool. Oh yeah, I love the pic I took of Susan spraying her husband Joe with sunscreen. 

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. 

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.