The Red Chair

First off, this was my very first legit attempt at photographing animals in a editorial type of photoshoot. Not counting candid, which is by far much easier (HA!)! 

What I came to learn from this shoot is bar none... is to have a squeaky toy! This is a must! Of course you can simply have an assistant jumping around around/under you to get the dog's attention to your camera, but most of the time I won't always have an assistant on my project shoots, especially when its indoors and no time limit like this one. Plus this was not just a one animal/pet shoot... I wanted to get as many dogs they had (which was 4?) in the frame looking at me. I soon realized this would be an impossible task with what I had available, so I decided to do a one by one and get the best shots I could. Check the video below at my attempt!

Breakdown: Red Dress Dark Fashion Post-Blizzard Stella

I got this concept pop into my head when the nor’easter blizzard of 2017 Stella hit my area… but as soon as it ended lol. I saw the contrast of white and red would be perfect for a shoot, so I scrambled to find anyone with a red dress and luckily found on for this past Thursday (a week after the blizzard hit) and luckily had just enough snow on the ground too.

Now my original plan was to try more off camera flash. So I took my 2 speedlites, as I just planned to use one and keep one as a backup as my YN600 is sorta having issues with “over heating” in a few pops. So I get to the park I wanted to shoot at (which mind you, I am more of an urban portrait shooter, haven’t shot in a park for at least 2 years but this concept was perfect for a park setting).

Natural Light Adventures 02: Gear Talk.

As I've mentioned in the previous post, I'm no gear head (but if I had the cash then hell yea I would lol). But it is important to know your limitations, working with what you have and making the best of it as much as you possibly can. Even if you need to push the boundaries on post processing which will allow your gear limitations to expand. We'll discuss further on post processing in another post, but keep in mind I'm not a magician in post processing.

The following may mention some information based on the assumption you've mastered manual mode on your camera.

Cameras

My choice of camera is a DSLR, more specifically canon, from T2i, XSi, 20D and a 6D. Now granted I did not expand much on my natural light photography until I had a 6D where it does have very high ISO ranges and great quality ISO up to 6400 and sometimes if really necessary 8000. This isn't a review of the canon 6D but just wanted to share my experience regarding ISO on the 6D.

The choice of camera will control most of your limitations of what you can and cannot do on natural light portrait work, and as mentioned control the size of available natural soft light during golden hours. Such as if your camera does not produce great or 
decent quality ISO higher than 1600, your limitations will be much smaller than a camera like a canon 6D having decent quality ISO at 8000, so your window could be 30-60 minutes possibly. 

Reveal 01: Heather Elaine - Lancaster, PA - Portrait & Fashion Shots

- "Reveal" is now a new series to help teach or inform those wondering how I shot a specific shot that they either asked or I thought it very much worth sharing. What I would normally share would be pretty much everything, as to why I choose the image, how I shot it, the location, etc. most of the day detail leading up to how and why the shot was created. As well some how and why I edited it in a certain way to the image(s) being revealed. 

Model: Heather Elaine MM#: 2963534

Assistant: Eric S.

Location: The Lancaster Central Market

The shot was not intended to be more of a portrait. The primary goal of the whole shoot was fashion and maybe a bit of lifestyle shots. As I got home looked over the images I noticed this shot. While it did not give neither an obvious fashion feel, or lifestyle shot I still had to select it and choose to edit this for my portfolio. It could easily be used as a great editorial portrait for my commercial website or solo portrait for my non-commercial side of my business. But I do have other shots within the same environment, model, wardrobe and lighting... just different pose and facial expression that makes it more obvious it is a fashion or lifestyle shot.

This shot (below) became the selected shot best represented fashion for this shoot. The shot does have more obvious post processing done but that is part of the trend of fashion photography I've learned. Even though I really wanted to do more photography with models with a lot less photoshoping than what the trends had, I could not simply not follow the trends if I wanted to succeed. I've learned in fashion photography you give what the market demands and what the fashion photography's demanding more intensely edited images even if they look fake or not, its not about that as long as the product(s) standout and the products clearly is the hero in the shots. Since this shot was my first shot I've intentionally spent more time in editing to intentionally want the super clean fashion look and feel I spent about 3-5 hours on editing it in the span of 3 days (1-2 hours a night). It did take longer than anyone would as I was using a few different new techniques, such as removed a lot of the skin texture then re-created it. 

Videos I used as point of reference was regarding techniques of both Frequency Separation and creating skin texture both shown by PHLEARN.

The Tech...
EXIF:
1st Shot: f/2.8
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/180th
Focal: 200mm

2nd Shot: f/2.8
ISO: 640
Shutter: 1/125th
Focal: 200mm

Time of Day: Between 730pm and 830pm EST 
Lighting: Lastolite 30x30 Large Softbox w/ YN600 on ETTL zoom 24mm, triggered with a YN622C. Light was held by an assistant, angled left of frame above model's head pointing down to create shadows underneath model's chin.
Camera+Lens: Canon 6D w/ Tamron 70-200 2.8 (non-VC)
Memory: Lexar Professional 400x 8GB



Ask any questions in the comments!