Recently, I had a photoshoot with 2 different girls in the same town. Montgomery is about a 1 hour drive from me and I knew that I wanted to split the day in half by shooting one girl in the morning and one in the afternoon before I had to drive home to Birmingham. Always I’m trying to think of something completely new and different regarding situations or props. Sometimes I get inspired by looking at pictures of the models or the subject to determine what we will do. A shoot like this is a bit different than an assignment from a magazine. When a magazine asks for me to shoot someone they are profiling they send me out and leave it up to me to do a portrait. In those cases I just have to figure it out when I arrive but in this case I planned ahead.
I have connections all over with lots and frequently cars are a good thing. I knew from past shoots that my friend who is a member of the British Motor Club that perhaps that is where I could start on finding someone in another town and sure enough that’s what I did. I saw on their site a guy with a vintage convertible Porsche but he had moved to another town and unavailable. But, the club president referred me to Mr. Diaz who didn’t have a Porsche but mini-coopers PLUS an airplane he willingly offered for us to use.
My assistant, John David, and I headed out early and met up with Mr. Diaz and Janna (our first shoot). One thing to notice in the video is how I made use of one location to get multiple shots and looks. Of course I was in a 1950′s era airplane hanger with a 2010 Cirrus that happened to have an old yellow bike and some cool lockers but my point is that if you really think through a shoot and a location you can achieve multiple shots from one location.
Sadly, the battery ran down on the video camera by the afternoon and we didn’t get any footage of Haden in the alley shoot. I climbed up on top of the roof of an adjacent building (thanks to Jamie for leading the way) where I tore my jeans (hey thanks guys for not pointing that out to me!) on the way up or down – can’t remember which. Check below for some of those photos.
Another lesson for photographers – while shooting Haden’s photos in the residential neighborhood in and around the mini-cooper we saw a lady walking with her enormous Bulldog! It so happens that I don’t meet a stranger and I’m pretty proactive (some say cocky but that’s another story) so I said hello and asked if we could borrow her pooch! The dog turned out to be a big handful but Haden handled it well and I think we got at least a couple of worthy shots. My advice: try anything that comes to mind!
Now, on to the video! John David did a great job shooting this on the 7D (thank you Canon!) and I edited it and had a great time doing so….
Many of you have a flash and I would venture to guess it’s attached to your hot shoe. Now, there are more adventurous types of you who have ventured out to off-camera flash with some sort of remote either with a cord attached to your hot shoe or a wireless remote like a Pocket Wizard. I was using my off camera flash yesterday with my model Lynlee at the Morgan Creek Vineyard when the opportunity came up for me to demonstrate the power of shadows.
The problem with the light yesterday was that it was 7PM and had been raining so there wasn’t much sun at all. I did my best to create my own sunshine. So I had Lynlee stand between two rows of vines while I shot over at her from slightly behind her left side. My assistant stood in the same aisle with her in the first picture with the flash (umbrella attached) pointed right at her. I looked at the picture and thought the light from the flash was good enough but the results weren’t what I desired.
Rule: Shadows make a photo more interesting not light. Actually, you do have to have light to create shadows which is the trick…use your light source to create shadows that make shots more intriguing. You wouldn’t put your subject looking directly into the sun would you? Of course not! You would put them turned slightly with the sun at the side or back of their head.
I had my assistant go over one more row of vines to the next aisle and point the flash up and over the vines at the right side of her face which created shadows on the left side of her face. I included a before and after shot to illustrate…
Light creates shadows when used correctly
The problem with this is going to be how do you get that $300 Canon 580 off the hot shoe right? A 6ft cord attached to the flash and the camera wouldn’t allow you to more your flash around very far. More on that later…yes it’s just more money!
I thought I would do a little bit of instructional post today. I shot JD yesterday at the train tracks and I lit him with a single gridded head and it lit his face well and kept the exposure of the background looking correct. However, the background is the problem. Have you ever taken a photo and thought, “If only that man with the pizza box weren’t in the background it would be a great photo?” My thoughts were similar to that on this photo where I thought the photo was nice and I did a little cross-processing on it and liked it. But, the background on the left really looked bad.
So what I did was to use the pen tool (in Photoshop) and outline very close to his hair and across his shoulder to mask off the part I wanted to remove down to the top of the silo. If you’ve never used the pen tool you should consider it because it is an excellent way to mask more accurately. After the selection was made I simply used the clone tool and since I had lots of blue sky I sampled the sky and cloned it over the parts I wanted to remove. Since all of that was next to and “behind” his head the mask allowed me to clone remove very accurately so it looks like nothing was there in the beginning.
If you have any questions about specifics shoot me an email. I wanted to illuminate the concepts and point you in the direction as to how you might be able to do the same thing on your photos.