Thursday, June 28, 2012

Portrait: Elaine

Elaine and I went to elementary, middle and high school together.

She is in Flag visiting my buddy Lindsey, who shaved her head.

I suckered her into a portrait session.




And that is that.

Both Elaine and Lindsey were an absolute pleasure to work with. Both took direction very well and both should consider spending more time in front of a camera.

For those who are curious, I shot both portraits with 700w/s of compact fluorescent hotlights, which look something like this:

500 up front in a strip-light style, but all aimed for even coverage. Then 200 in the back for a hairlight + rimlight.

Not a bad setup, when it comes right down to it. I would definitely prefer strobes, but you do what you gotta do. With this much light I was at 800 ISO at 1/125 sec at F/3.2, give or take a bit for how close we moved the subject to the lights, etc.

Portrait: BALD Lindsey

As you may recall, my friend Lindsey shaved her head for cancer.

She had hair.
Then she raised over $2,000 for cancer research.
Then we shaved it at Studio204.
Then we did a portrait session.





Overall, definitely a fun experience!

Shaving Lindsey's Head

This whole process was great.

Lindsey and her friends showed up and we got right to it. I think pretty much everybody got to cut at least some of her hair off. It was a team effort.

I ended up doing the final cleanup, since my hear has been about as long as hers is now for approximately forever.

The images are in no particular order, because Blogger sucks and refuses to load them by filename. How hard can it possibly be?


























  


Real portraits to come later... and hopefully Blogger can figure out how to load my images in order...

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Puppies in color

I don't like these as much as I do the black and whites.... but maybe you do!






Today is the day that Lindsey shaves her head - so a blog post tomorrow or Friday is likely.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Picture Perfect Puppies

Today I participated in a quickie tvC photowalk.
Our event today coincided with the Pets in the Pines event held each year in Flagstaff, so we went to see what was going on.

In a nutshell - dogs were going on. I sort of fell in love with this lil' fellow. Rather than taking him home, where I have neither time nor money enough to deal with a dog, I photographed him for 30 minutes.



He really wanted to come home with me...

and was clearly dubious of his other prospects

Kristen had her heart stolen too...

This is my second shoot in the last week that I have processed without Aperture, instead opting for the Bridge/Photoshop combo. I am so far very pleased. Adobe's products run WAY faster and they don't force me to kill time between downloading and starting the editing process. I may be doing this for the foreseeable future.

Everything shot with the intention of greyscale conversion on the D300s with the 50mm prime. (the one lens to rule them all). I've really been loving that combination recently.

Another post coming soon with the color versions of a few of these.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Portrait Day: Back to Basics

I was lucky enough to spend a couple hours in studio204 today with some willing subjects.

No rush, no BS, no clients or money on the line, just hanging out and making portraits.
The focus for the day was black and white, with departure from the million-light setups that were so common while I was at the studios at NAU. One light. One subject. Back to basics.

Sean went first.

As always, click to enlarge.



He's classy like that.


The lovely Lauren Hanssssssss - she's modeled before.

And then, without warning, my 5' softbox falls off the Einstein head and in the process, destroys the flashtube. Whoever designed the modifier mounting system for the Einstein should be shot. Repeatedly.

Anyway. We gave up on the strobe and went to CFLs when John showed up. He's got that sort of pissed-off-viking-rockstar-motherfucker look to him, so I tried to play off that.



And I guess he's got that creeper-in-the-corner look too... Cuz he pulls it off.


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Lindsey in color

Even though my original concept for the portrait was black and white, and even though I prefer it that way, I processed a few in color - just cuz I can.



I may or may not have a couple portraits coming up this week - and I may or may not be seriously looking into purchasing a ringflash from Paul C Buff.
Stay tuned for updates.