Sohinee

This past weekend I had a modeling/portrait session at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts with Sohinee. Even though her wonderful dark exotic look comes from her Indian ancestry, she's been mistaken for Latina, Spanish, and Italian.

Sohinee is a really trooper. Even though it was cloudy, cold (50 degrees), and there was a threat of rain, she was out there posing in a strapless minidress. Nothing seemed to faze her. She was very easy to work with and took direction well. I'm looking forward to working with her again in the near future.

Dynamo Soccer Fall 2010

Update: The soccer photos can be found here.
This past weekend was my fourth time photographing the Dynamo Soccer recreational leagues. Fortunately this weekend we had great weather and I was able to photograph just about all of the teams.

One of the things I am trying to do differently this time around is to have a single weekend designated for reshoots and make-ups. Last Spring, the Sunday we had scheduled for photos was rained out. I ended up having to contact the teams I missed and making alternate arrangements. Some teams had to be scheduled multiple times because key people were missing from the first reshoot. I ended up making almost a dozen trips to Schenley Park, and it took almost the entire month of May before I had finally photographed all 62 teams in the league. I didn't want a repeat of that experience.

Krystal

This past Thursday I had a modeling/portrait session at Settler's Cabin Park. Krystal is model I contacted via OneModelPlace. I contacted her as one of the sessions that I was going to have videotaped as part of a promotional video that I am having done.

One of the things I experimented with this time was "Pseudo-moonlight". This involves using lighting and white-balance tricks to make in appear that the photo was taken at night, rather than the middle of the day. It is actually a very old Hollywood trick. I'll have more on this in a future post.

Share

Share (pronounced "Shari" or "Cheri") is another model I contacted via OneModelPlace. She joined OMP recently and has been extremely busy, including appearing in the new Taylor Lautner film Abduction which has been filming in Pittsburgh. Because Share has been so busy lately, it took us several weeks before we were finally able to get together for a session. Unfortunately, the weather was a solid overcast, which meant the lighting was extremely dull. So out came the flashes to add some spark to the photos. We started the session at the Allegheny County Airport, and from there moved to nearly McBride Park. Unfortunately the pavilion at the park is in a state of disrepair and is covered with graffiti. We were able to actually get more of an urban look (as shown at left), even though we were in a park. Unfortunately Share's stomach started to bother her, so we had to cut the session short after one clothing change.

Shooting a Self-Portrait

I decided it was time to create a new photo of myself for use as an avatar on various photo forums and for social networking sites. But too many photographers use a standard studio portrait of themselves, or a photo of them holding a camera. I wanted something different.

The concept for this photo got its start with an old manual typewriter sitting in my basement. I wanted to use it as a prop for some vintage photos. Since I'm an "old school" (or is it "old skool"?) photographer, I decided to have some fun with that theme and go with the idea of an old-time (1940's or 1950's) news photographer.

Unfortunately I no longer have my cameras that would be appropriate for that era (a 4x5 view camera or a twin-lens roll film camera), so the best I could come up with was my first Nikon film SLR. It is a 1983 motordrive-equipped Nikon FM2. I guess it says something about the current camera state-of-the-art that a manual-focus film camera is "vintage".

I decided to try shooting this in my garage, just to see how well that would work. Unfortunately we have a detached garage and it isn't air conditioned! I used the blue side of my collapsible chromakey backdrop, which I prefer to the green side. The table is a plain plastic folding table (I didn't feel like trying to lug a vintage desk into my garage!).

I wanted strong dramatic lighting, so my main light was my SB-600 flash clamped to one of the ceiling rafters. My SB-800 was bounced off a silver umbrella to the right of the camera. This was at a fairly low angle, so there would be enough light under the brim of the hat.

Originally this was going to be a true self-portrait, and I was going to use an infrared remote to trigger the camera. Since it was summer and he is off school, I decided to let my Junior Assistant-in-Training trigger the camera. Unfortunately his attention span is only slightly longer than a full-power flash, so we only worked with the one setup.

Since this is supposed to be a vintage shot, a B&W conversion was the obvious choice. I went with a more contrasty conversion to get the effect I wanted. I'm pleased with the end result, but I may revisit the concept to try some alternate angles.

"Double Exposure": How NOT to be a Photographer

The Bravo cable channel started a new reality show this week called Double Exposure. It follows the behind-the-scenes life of celebrity photographers Klinko and Indrani. They have been featured extensively in Digital Photo Pro magazine, among other places. So I was interested in seeing how the "pros" did it.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed the episode, and noted that Klinko and Indrani had recently gone through bankruptcy proceedings. Given what I saw in the premiere episode, I'm not surprised. Besides the "jet setter" lifestyle (and the expenses entailed), the way these two act during a photo session is enough to send potential clients running. They apparently believe that "Celebrity Photography" means that the photographers are the celebrities. They fight with each other, fight with their assistants, and fight with the clients:



Although I can see where this kind of tension can result in some great photos, it doesn't inspire any confidence from the client. Why would anyone want to hire them? Ironically, Kinko talks about seducing the subject (which I agree with), but there's nothing seductive about screaming and carrying on like a prima donna. You're supposed to make a client comfortable in what for most is an uncomfortable situation.

The whole point of doing a "behind-the-scenes" video, whether it is just for YouTube or for your own reality series, is to show how professional you are, and make clients want to hire you. And Double Exposure just plain doesn't do that...

Corey and Carrie

In spite of the weather, I had a lot of fun this past weekend photographing Carey and Carrie's wedding. Carrie's mom had a really amazing backyard, which was great for posing Carrie and the bridesmaids before we headed out to the church. After the ceremony and family photos at the front of the church, we headed to the North Shore to photograph the bridal party at the waterfall there. The entire bridal party ended up climbing into the waterfall (Their idea, not mine!), which has to rank up there as one of the craziest things I've had a bridal party do...