onelight workshop

i attended a onelight workshop on monday, put on by zack arias. it was a really great experience, meeting a lot of amazing photographers, and getting to listen and ask zack questions..... the whole thing was invaluable. about halfway through the workshop, we broke into groups and broke out our cameras. at first zack set up the lighting and shot, but at the end we were freed to set up our own shots and do things for ourselves. here's a few pictures i got from the event:

so, i had a great time, met some great photographers, and got a few new ideas that i'll be exploring over the course of the next few months with my photography. if you have any questions about the workshop, or how any of these pictures were shot, ask away and i'll get back to you as quick as i can.

alisia + grandma

jp

hdr experiment

i keep wanting to like hdr, i really do. but i'm just not feeling it. anyways, alisia looks really great here. so that's something.

i think this is the one i'm allergic to

like meisel

i've been studying the work of a lot of fashion photographers lately, and i came across an ad campaign by steven meisel the other day, for lanvin. he did a series of shots where he was duplicating half of the image in photoshop and flipping it around, to make a whole out of two halves. the effect was really interesting, surreal but not immediately identifiable. since i've been working on my photoshop a bit here lately, i thought i'd give it a shot.

so this is my initial attempt. i'm about to modify the idea slightly.... i have a few tweaks to try that i think will improve the overall concept.... the lighting in my shot isn't as good as in his. i was thinking one hard light source would create a lot of interesting shadow areas on the form, but the hard light created problems in terms of facial symmetry, and took away some of the close-to-reality-but-a-little-bit-off quality that meisel's picture has. adding a soft fill light will probably help.

version 2 coming soon......

shootin kids

so i got the chance to shoot some kids down the street the other day. our neighbors have these two ridiculously cute kids, cedar and griffin (cedar is the girl, and griffin is the boy with the awesome mullet). i haven't really had much chance to shoot kids before.... it's not really an area i'm focused on, but i figured i could take a couple of risks and try going in some new directions.

so i put together two setups. the first is pretty straightforward portrait stuff. a softbox (with grid) for key, and a cto gelled flash behind the subject for a bit of golden sun-going-down-back-there light. i set up in the shade near our apartment, a row of bushes for background.

the second setup was in front of a old weathered wooden fence that was conveniently about ten feet away. for this concept i wanted to go in some new direction, so i set up a five light rig. i had a gridded 16" beauty dish for key, my ring flash with moon unit + big ring for fill, two hard back lights for rim, one on either side of the subjects, and one on the ground putting a dramatic gradient on the fence behind them.

it's amazing how one light can turn a boring old fence into some crazy dynamic background, y'know?

so yeah, two setups, one simple, one complex. it got a bit dicey, i didn't have the five light setup ready to go when they arrived, so i had to adjust my ratios on the fly..... never an ideal situation. but i guess that's part of the fun, making people wait while you troubleshoot and get things just perfect.

i'm pleased with how everything came out. nice to shoot outside of the living room, and i think the five light setup really went well. that picture up there of them making faces, especially. i guarantee you, five years from now, that's going to be their parent's favorite picture in the world. 

bonus shots: