Judging by the room Josh and Maegan had, I’d say the San Luis Resort penthouse suites are – well -  sweet

I entered with all of my gear, set it out of the way of the ladies in the room, and began picking up cups and plates off of the coffee table and moving chairs and other things around the room to make space for forthcoming photo ops. I decided there would be no need for any flash as the ambient light from the balcony windows mixed nicely with the interior shadows. The bride finally returned from the salon and the photography process began.  And this, folks is where the art of photography really comes into play when capturing the beauty of the Bride and her Ladies.

I first saw Maegan in her little “Bride” robe when she waltzed down to the salon for her hair appointment. She told me the bridesmaids and matron of honor each had robes as well only they were in the bride’s color (aqua) with white embroidery writing on the backs.

I’ve noticed this about the “getting ready” sessions I have photographed prior to the actual wedding ceremony: they are all very relaxed and intimate, with hugs and fun chatter and quiet excitement of the ceremony to come. Talk centers around family. In the image above, Nana was showing her granddaughter the locket that will someday belong to her.

When you are hired to photograph a wedding, it’s so very important to get to know the couple prior to the Big Day.   Why?  Because having the couple  feel comfortable with you and your style is worth so much in terms of the kinds of photographs you can achieve on their behalf.  When everybody feels comfortable around you, then they tend to not feel so self-conscious and worried about having a camera around them on a constant basis.  They relax in your presence and the photographs you capture reveal the love, affection, and emotion of the day.

Getting a photo of the wedding dress is almost a de rigeur photo nowadays.  And Maegan was cracking me up.  Pretty much everything she wore said “Bride”, from her robe to her tank top.

That quiet excitement began to build as the bride was helped into her gown and finishing touches were applied.

I made use of my 70-200mm, 50mm, and 24-70mm lenses for these images. All of them hand-held. No flash. In all of the photos with people (excepting the reception images), I added a touch of Imagenomic’s Portraiture. It’s all about looking good for the wedding, you know.

If you are in a situation where you can utilize side-lighting, then by all means do so, as it is fantastic for portraits.

If you are in a situation where you can utilize backlighting for the bride, then this is another one of those “by all means do so” moments.

Yes, the backlit bride and her dress are clichéd shots that all photographers get, but nobody can argue they aren’t beautiful images and every backlit bride image is different from wedding to wedding, so it’s not *quite* the same thing as photographing a landscape that everybody else with a camera has captured.

I also made use of black & white with some of the photos. Weddings, IMO, were made for monochrome. In some cases, I noticed the black & white images bringing out more dress detail than in the color images.

Next post: Posed Shots – The Bride, Groom, The Bridesmaids, The Bridal Party

The Groom and His Men.   The groom, Josh,  is second from the left, sitting down beside his Best Man.

Let’s face it: the groomsmen tend to get short shrift when it comes to wedding photography.  The bride gets soooo many more photos; I admit to having captured far more images of the bride than of the groom.  That being said, I did my utmost to get great shots of the guys.

After my hair and makeup photo op session with the bride, her mother, her daughter and the bridesmaids, I grabbed my lighting equipment and hot-footed it down to one of the lower levels of the resort where the guys were getting ready in a small, private club / gameroom.

The entire scene was infused with old-fashioned gentlemen’s club masculinity: the subdued golden lighting, the pool tables, the poker tables, the (unstocked) bar, the leather couches.  All that was missing was the blue cloud of cigar smoke hanging in the air.

All of the images here were taken with the ISO set to between 640 and 2000, even when I used flash.  Two of the scenes I photographed were taken with only the ambient light and no flash.  In hindsight, I was near a number of electrical outlets, so I should have used my 500-watt continuous light with the umbrella instead of the flash, as I would have been able to see the light at all times instead of just after I’d taken the shot.

For the scene at the top of this post, I used my Gary Fong diffuser dome over the flash which was on my 5D Mk III.  I set the ISO to 1250 with a shutter of 1/40 and an aperture of f4.

For the pool table scenes, I set up the umbrella and flash so the light went through the umbrella onto the guys.  The off-camera flash setup was approximately 45 degrees to my right and at one end of the pool table so that the light was softer and covered the entirety of the groom and groomsmen.  I used the 5D Mk III, set the ISO to 640, the shutter speed to 1/50 and the aperture to f4.

For this poker table scene, I turned the umbrella so that the open end faced the men.  The flash bounced off of the umbrella rather than shot through. This produced a stronger light on the guys.  I used the 5D Mk III and set the ISO at 640 with a shutter of 1/50 and an aperture of f4.

This scene was shot with just the ambient light.  I used the 50mm prime on my Canon 1-DX,  set the ISO to 1000  and the shutter at 1/40 with an aperture of f4.

For this toast scene, I again used only  ambient light, setting the ISO on the 5D Mk III to 2000 with a shutter of 1/25 and an aperture of f4.

I used the Gary Fong dome diffuser over my flash for this image, setting the ISO at 1250, shutter at 1/40 and aperture at f4.

The only issue I really needed to watch was getting reflections of all of the guys in the polished coffee table as they toasted the groom. Maybe I didn’t get all of their faces in the reflections, but I at least got their arms with the drinks.  Oh, btw, that liquid was *not* whiskey.  The guys mixed coke and a little water to make it look like whiskey.

Despite the best efforts of my flash, I still worked with Photoshop CS6 to lighten some of the faces.  The photo I most had to work with was the first photo in this post.  The other photos were better in terms of the amount of light and shadow I wanted. Because of the low-light interior, it was necessary to use my Imagenomic Noiseware reduction software to get rid of that graininess inherent with low-light / high ISO imagery.

The bride and groom had created an extremely handy schedule, so I knew exactly where I had to be and when. And, by golly, that schedule worked like a charm for everything! So, after the groomsmen photographs, I checked the time then lugged myself, my cameras, and my lighting equipment up to Maegan and Josh’s 16^th floor penthouse suite.

Next post: Getting Ready

My day of photography did not start until 10AM, when I met the bride, her mother, her daughter, and bridesmaids down in the resort’s spa for a morning of hairstyling and makeup.

The salon portion of the spa is relatively small – or rather, I should say it’s styling cubicles are relatively small, so one of the things I had to watch out for was accidentally getting in the way of the shot. I photo-bombed myself more than once, I’m afraid.

Since this was an interior photo op, I increased the ISO to 500. I had my Gary Fong dome diffuser attached to the flash on my 1-DX, but never used it as it would have reflected in the salon’s mirrors.

Hair and makeup sessions make for great ops, despite the above considerations. Make use of the mirrors and their reflections. Frame your compositions at different angles for some variety.

And try to get images that the ladies would like (i.e. try not to take unflattering straight shots of faces without makeup – if you do happen to get those shots, then make sure you’ve added a little interest or humor to the comp).

I was there from 10AM to about 12:30PM. After that, I was off to photograph the groom and his men.

Ok, so in my previous post, I gave you the lowdown on the wedding location and the gear I took with me.  I’d checked in that Saturday afternoon and proceeded to get my stuff spread out all over the room; when I was finished it sorta looked like my room at home (grin).

That evening, around 5PM, everybody met in the resort’s entrance hall and then headed to the gazebo for a very quick rehearsal run-through with the resort’s wedding planner.

I was not scheduled to take any rehearsal dinner photos, but I wanted to be there for the rehearsal prior to their dinner to meet the key players as well as to scope out the gazebo venue for photo op locations.  Since I was carrying my 5D Mark III with the 24-70mm lens with me, I figured I might as well take a few pics (can you imagine me *not* taking any photos if I have a camera handy?).  I had to remember to switch from a higher ISO for the above indoor shot to a much lower ISO for the outdoor images.

Rehearsal didn’t last but maybe 10 minutes max, and then they were all off to their dinner.  I had made a reservation at the resort’s restaurant called The Steakhouse.  I highly recommend this place for the food, polished and unobtrusive service, and ambience.   Pricey, yes, but it was a little splurge for me (my hairstylist returned from her Puerto Rico vacation with a huge cold and had to cancel my hair appointment for that week, so I instead blew that cash on dinner).  I figured what the heck, I had the whole night ahead of me to relax and get ready for the next day’s activities and figured I might as well treat the day as a nice getaway from home (spotted some neat birding photo op locations along the way to Galveston).

Next post: the first photo ops of the Big Day.

Originally, I had written a 2800-word blog post (give or take). Yikes! Way too long! I think the human attention span tends to get a nervous tic over anything past 1200 words (which is the length I try to stick to but oftentimes never successfully manage). I personally can’t stand reading uber-long posts, no matter how helpful they may be; I tend to skim over them and just look at the pictures. I’d forgotten about this, though, in my 2800-word zeal to get everything down about my experience photographing this wedding. Then, I started reading some short but neat blog posts by Scottseyephotos about his photographic trip to Hallo Bay, AK, and I realized I was far more interested reading his numerous, interesting short blog posts than I would have been had he combined all of his bear articles into a single post. So, I’ve separated this original post into several shorter ones.

Here’s the First Post, which I hope whets your photographic-blogospheric appetite for the next post:

I had the great fortune to photograph Josh & Maegan’s wedding in Galveston, Texas, back in late April (2013).  The venue was the San Luis Resort.  I reserved a room for the weekend and prepared for the event.

What I took with me:

• Canon 1-DX body + 3 spare batteries
• Canon 5D Mk III body + 4 spare batteries
• A rented Canon 6D body (go read my previous blog for my take on this body)
• Canon 85mm f1.2L lens  (which I absolutely loved but never used for this event)
• Canon 50mm f1.2L lens
• Canon 24-70mm f2.8L II lens
• Canon 70-200mm f2.8L II lens
• A rented Canon 14mm f2.8L lens (go read my previous blog for my take on this lens)
• A 7’ parabolic white umbrella
• 2 Canon 600 EX-RT flashes  (one of them was a rental)
• Canon ST-E3-RT transmitter
• Gary Fong flash head diffuser dome
• 2 lightstands (of which I only used one of them)
• One 500-watt studio light (which I did not use but now wish I had for the groomsmen shots instead of my flash – that way I could have seen right away how the lighting situation would look).
• Induro 8X CT314 tripod  legs and Induro BHD3 ballhead (I only used it for the HDR shots of my room interior and balcony view, believe it or not – all of the wedding shots were hand-held)
• 42 memory cards, both CF and SDHD in 4GB and 8GB capacities
• 15” Laptop
• 2 portable hard drives
• 2 memory card readers (in case something happened to one of them)
• Battery charger for each type of battery
• My portable MiFi (never used it since the resort had free WiFi)
• All the assorted cords and connecters needed to power up the other items listed
• My LowePro Slingshot AW 202 camera backpack
• My Think Tank Airport Commuter camera backpack
• My Photoflex Transpac to carry all my lighting equipment (it turned out to be rather large and exceedingly heavy, so I plan on ordering something smaller to take with me for my next gig)

I’ve written a TripAdvisor review including photos of my room and the resort.  Suffice to say that I enjoyed my stay, liked my room, loved the view, but wished they had provided me with a different type of coffee maker .  A small complaint, but coffee is a mainstay for me when traveling and working with photos on my laptop.   I usually pack my own coffee and filters with the assumption the room has a 4-cup coffee maker.  It didn’t work with this particular room.

Looking down at the wedding venue from Josh & Maegan’s 16th-floor penthouse suite.

Now you have the location and the venue.  Next post:  my first photo op with the bride and her crew.

Here’s the link to my article. Go check it out!

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/05/photography-national-parks-made-monochrome23199

I recently had the pleasure of photographing a wedding at the San Luis Resort in Galveston Texas.   The weather was perfect, the bride was stunning, the groom handsome, and the entire event went off without a hitch.   It was an awesome day, as all wedding days should be.

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I’m a list maker.   This task helps me remember events, appointments, and what gear to take with me for various events like said wedding.   As I reviewed my camera/lens list, I thought about  how neat it might be to rent a really wide-angle lens to capture the guests, the ceremony, basically the whole wedding venue.   So I went on to my favorite Lensrentals.com and reserved one Canon 14mm f2.8L II lens.

A couple of weeks later, as I was reviewing my gear list for the umpteenth time, the thought dawned on me that the two cameras I planned on utilizing during the ceremony would already each have a specific lens on them.  Wedding ceremonies are one of those events that brook no do-overs of the day, and I sure as heck didn’t want to waste valuable time switching out lenses between the 14mm and one of the other two lenses (the Canon 24-70 f2.8L II and the Canon 70-200 f2.8L II).   So, I went back to Lensrentals.com and decided this wedding might be a great opportunity (and also kind of fun) to try out the new Canon 6D full-frame camera  onto which I would affix the 14mm and just leave it there.

Canon 6D Body

Ok, my bad: I did *not* think to take a photo of the 6D next to my 5D Mk III and 1-DX camera bodies.   Mea culpa.

Out Of The Box:

· It takes a SD/SDHD card.  Period.  I figured as much, since Canon’s other small cameras have accepted only that particular type of memory card.

· Suffice it to say that the 6D is a little camera.  It’s smaller than the 5D Mk III, and miniscule compared to the 1-DX.  It fits my small hands perfectly, but I think anybody with larger hands might find it a little awkward to handle.

· The buttons on the camera back are positioned a little differently – I got a bit confused trying to find the delete button.

· The battery for this camera is the same as the battery for the 5D Mk II and the 5D Mk III (that was good, because I have a number of spares).

In Use:

· It’s much quieter than my 5D III and literally silent compared to my 1-DX (one of the noisiest cameras I have ever used).

· It’s slow.   Probably as fast as the 5D Mk II, but definitely slower than the 5D Mk III, so I don’t know that it would be so great for sports or wildlife action shots. If you used a flash, then sure it would probably be fine.   Oh, and there is n0 built-in pop-up flash, btw.

· It’s got GPS and WiFi capabilities. I turned on the GPS menu function to tag my locations.  I never used the WiFi function, but both are pretty neat, considering the lack of either on my other two cameras .  I can’t believe the 1-DX doesn’t have at least GPS.  Heck, for the amount of money I paid for that camera, it should be able to make me a cup of coffee in addition to taking pictures. .

· Because it is small, and because the 14mm lens is light and relatively small, too, the combo fit nicely into the Lowepro Slingshot 202 AW backpack I carried with me during the wedding day.

· The camera does a pretty good job with low-light situations but I still had to use noise-reduction software for those images.

· The AF points are like the 5D Mk II.

· It’s got in-camera HDR settings.  Unfortunately, I could never get it to work correctly for me and I forgot to bring along the instruction booklet.  Oh, and  the 6D  doesn’t let you make an HDR in Raw – it’s jpg only.

Conclusion:

This is the kind of camera I would carry around with me in my purse.  It would make a nice little back-up camera and would definitely make a great full-frame starter camera for someone wanting to make the leap to full-frame but not willing to fork over the dollars for a 5D Mk III or 1-DX.  Of course, this camera doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that my other two cameras have, but this camera does have WiFi and GPS.  The resolution is somewhere between the 1-DX and the 5D Mk III – well, allow me to amend that: the megapixel count is somewhere between those two cameras – resolution looks about the same what with all the improvements made to the newer digital SLRs nowadays.  I don’t like the fewer number of AF points on this camera; I personally like the multitude of AF points of my 5D Mk III much better.

If you want a detailed review, try Ken Rockwell’s review (although I don’t always agree with everything he has to say about a camera or lens and I know some photographers get quite vitriolic over Mr. Rockwell’s reviews).  DP Review also has a much more detailed, in-depth discussion of this camera which I really like. You can also check out Lensrentals.com’s short review of this camera.

Ok, so now, what did I think of the Canon 14mm f2.8 Lens?

I LOVE this lens!  It’s fun!  I have never used such a wide-angle lens before and I was able to get some funky shots with it on the 6D.  I think I might have to rent this lens for one of my upcoming trips this year.  The only caveat is that because of the curvature of the lens glass, I’ll have to use a special rear filter for any polarizer shots.

What is this lens like on a full-frame camera?  You know the wording you  see on a car’s passenger-side mirror: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”? Well, that’s true of the 14mm. I ’d have the camera/lens to my eye getting closer and closer to my subject, and when I’d bring the camera down from my face, I found I would be standing practically on top of my subject.

To get this shot above, I lay down on the dance floor (narrowly avoiding the feet of a couple of dancers) and aimed the camera up toward the bride, groom, the bride’s brother and his wife (who was also the bride’s matron of honor).  Funny story which highlights  the previous remark about objects being closer than they look.  I was on the floor, snapping away and all of a sudden this little face looms large in my lensview.  The bride’s 7-year old daughter was looking down at me intently (her face must have been practically on top of mine) and finally she said “Hey, did you know your face is red?!”  LOL.  I was hot and sweating, so I’ll bet my face was, indeed, red.

There is no image stabilization with this lens, so my modus operandi was to aim, focus, and hold down on that shutter button for 4-5 shots in succession. Of course, in good lighting (like outdoor lighting or flash), any lens shake shouldn’t be a problem as long as the shutter speed is high enough or the aperture is bumped up.

The color, clarity, and depth of images produced by this lens are really sweet. Take a look for yourself!

This is an HDR image of my hotel room at the San Luis.  For this, I had attached the lens to my Canon 5D Mk III because I wanted to use a tripod and this camera had the L-bracket to fit onto my tripod.  I had forgotten to bring a tripod plate for the 6D.  Oh well, that was the only thing I forgot, so I was doing pretty well.

The resort’s entryway

Right outside of the resort’s glass-enclosed entryway

The bride’s procession down the rose petal-strewn grass aisle

The Officiant presenting the bride to the groom

The ceremony

Ceremony over.  Cameras and cameraphones pulled out!

The reception hall

I’ll have a separate blog about my wedding session and the gear/lighting equipment I used for that day.  Stay tuned!

Meet Zara

Meet Tsura

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I think I’ve written in an earlier blog post that I used to consider myself primarily a landscape photographer , i.e. I never photographed people that much.  Then, I moved to Texas and became involved with the King’s Feast at the Texas Renaissance Festival.  One thing led to another and I was capturing images of festival actors, dancers, families, weddings, and other people-populated events.

Because of an increase in portrait sessions and weddings (yay me), I finally decided to invest in some relatively inexpensive studio lights and umbrellas that would be portable enough for me to use on-location (as long as there are nearby outlets or as long as I can afford to rent a portable battery source).  My own home is not set up with any sort of studio and I live a good hour’s drive away from the Houston metro area.  Because of this, it’s much easier for me to go to the client rather than have the client come to me.

Note:  this is a long post because of all the info I want to share, along with the resulting photos.  I could have broken this up into shorter blogs, but I am hoping your attention spans will not be so short that you don’t soak up a little bit of what I have learned that I want to pass on to you for your own endeavors.  I’ve personally read through extremely lengthy blog posts written by others, so I figure I’m not an anomaly.

Recently, I spent a couple of hours working with a belly dancer and a violinist, both members of the Gypsy Dance Theatre as well as artists in their own right, performing at other (mainly evening) venues such as coffee houses and cozy atmospheric restaurants and cafes.  Both Zara (the belly dancer) and Tsura (the violinist) needed some portfolio shots.

The time spent with them was rich not only in wonderful photo ops but also wonderful challenges and learning lessons.

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In my own mind, when I think of studio photography, I am thinking of a space with plenty of room to move around the model(s) and a backdrop anywhere from 7 feet to 20 feet behind the model(s).  In reality, the studio setup for this session was a small living room full of furniture and one soft little dog that kept wondering what was happening to his world (and who, on occasion, wanted to be a part of the scenery).

I arrived on location an hour early in order to move the furniture around, set up the lights, and run a few practice shots to see where best to place the umbrellas.   I’ve been reading one of Scott Kelby’s books “The Digital Photography Book 4”  and he notes that for great lighting, one needs a large soft box (or umbrella, in my case) quite close to the model (the closer the light source, the softer the light on the model).   According to Kelby, keeping things simple is also a key factor so only one light is really all that is needed as opposed to a plethora of lights; the more the lights, the more the complications.   To get really soft light over a lot of the model, a soft box (or umbrella) of greater than 50” is recommended.

I used two Interfit EZ Lite 500 watt tungsten lights that I purchased as a kit. One of those lights was behind a Westcott 7’ parabolic white umbrella  which I used in lieu of that 50+ inch soft box close to the model (an umbrella was cheaper and I still claimed ignorance regarding studio lighting at the time I purchased the umbrella). The other light was attached to a smaller white umbrella for rim lighting.   The room was small so there was maybe 1 – 3 feet of space between the models and the beige living room wall (I liked that better than using a white background).

I utilized both my Canon 1-DX and Canon 5D Mk III cameras. Ultimately, I liked the 1-DX better because it was much faster – particularly for the veil dancing images.   I used the Canon 24-70mm f2.8L II lens for the wider compositions. For the headshots and closer comps, I initially started out using the Canon 85mm f1.2 lens.   I LOVE this lens.   It’s my absolute favorite and my ultimate go-to for portrait work.   However, because I had very little “wiggle room” in terms of where I stood while using this lens – which in turn restricted what I could fit into the composition – I ultimately changed over to the Canon 50mm f1.2 lens for a bit of a wider view.   I started out on tripod but quickly abandoned that in favor of handholding the camera (which is another reason I preferred the much faster 1-DX over the 5D Mk III).

I know many photographers use aperture priority for this kind of work, but I like to do things the hard way and stick to total Manual Mode, setting both the aperture and shutter speed to my own liking rather than the camera’s liking.  It makes me think about things and situations more.  Plus, I am a control freak and like having that feeling of total control over the settings.   It’s sort of like owning a car with a stick shift (which I do) rather than one that’s fully automatic.

Shutter speeds, ISO, and apertures varied.  I used an aperture anywhere from f2.8 to f5.  ISO was between 200 and 400, and shutter speed was between 80 and 160, depending on whether I was photographing a still model or a twirling, veil-waving model.

I used Adobe Lightroom 4 and Adobe Photoshop CS6 for my photo editing.  I also applied Imagenomic’s Portraiture plug in to all of my photos.  I own and have used a couple of different portraiture applications, but this one, by far, is my favorite.  And, of course, I had to clone out other things like pimples and stray hairs across the face and also hot spots (overly bright areas) on the face.  Plus, I brightened the whites of the eyes and sometimes the teeth in a number of shots.  These are portfolio images where the models wanted to look their absolute best.

I once read on a Facebook comment that “Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the full extent of the situation”.   I was relatively confident throughout the photo session (but only after I became comfortable with the continuous lights and umbrellas in action).   I can also tell you (with confidence) that portrait post-processing takes much longer to accomplish than editing a landscape photo.

All that being said, I am very pleased with the results, some selections of which I share here with you.

Scott Kelby’s book mentions that the look (and length) of the model can vary quite a bit depending on the height from which the photographer is aiming the camera.  The top full-length image of Zara was taken with me standing atop a small step-ladder aiming the  camera down toward her.  The bottom image of Zara was taken with me sitting on the step-ladder aiming the camera slightly up toward her.

Zara kept talking about how she wanted lots of pictures taken with Hissy.  I thought Hissy was the nickname she’d given to the other model coming to this photo shoot.  Turns out Hissy is Zara’s pet snake which she uses in a number of her dance routines.

In addition to the regular editing tools I utilized  in Adobe Lightroom 4 and Adobe Photoshop CS6, I also applied this wonderful plug in by OnOne Software called Perfect Effects 4.  This plug in allowed me to choose from a bunch of different presets (one on top of the other, if I wished) to which I could make my own tweaks.  Depending upon my preset choices, I was able to add a little kick, edginess, softness or glamour to selected images.  For those of you who are not familiar with a preset, it’s a file composed of a number of settings  which – much like a spreadsheet macro – may be applied to any photo you happen to be editing.

Ah, the background.  As you noticed from the photos of the studio setup near the top of this post, the workspace was limited.  The model stood anywhere from 1- to 3-feet away from the beige wall background.  So, in the editing stage, I took some liberties to change up the background a little.  I either used a preset from my Perfect Effects 4 plug in, or, I created a separate layer and then used the Magic Wand tool or the Magnetic Lasso tool in Photoshop to select only the background (and in some cases, the floor as well).  I then used the Gaussian Blur filter at an extremely high pixel count (977.2 pixels, to be exact) to totally blur out the background and floor.  This effect also created (to my pleasant surprise) a certain amount of color bleed from the costume and the veils.  I then created a mask for that particular layer in order to “paint in” only the blurred background and floor, leaving the model alone.  This process turned out to be pretty cool and I was able to show Zara how she looked against a dark background (she’d been worried that a dark backdrop would totally hide her dark hair and dark costumes).  I told her that with good rim lighting, that wouldn’t have been too much of an issue.

Speaking of rim lighting, I read in Kelby’s book that you can get a neat rim light profile silhouette by doing the following:  have your model stand very close and to the side of your rim light.  So, as Tsura was walking past the umbrella, I had her stop, face the light, then take a few sideways steps so that she wasn’t smack dab in the middle of the umbrella, blinding herself in the process.

At one point, I turned off the rim light and simply used the large 7’ parabolic umbrella turned so that the open end of the ‘brella was facing the models and the light source was bouncing off of the umbrella, rather than shooting through it.  This created a harder light which was wonderful for those side-lit images that allowed the shadows to outline parts of the face and body.  It also created some neat side shadows as well on the wall.

I used to pooh-pooh studio photography thinking I would never be doing that sort of thing.  Never say never.  I now admit that I enjoy playing with the scenes afforded me by continuous lighting.  I also enjoy the creativity I can apply to such challenges as limited studio space, backdrops, and the overall final image.  Oh, I’m still a landscape photographer, and am still in the learning stages of studio shoots, but I LOVE stretching my photographic “muscles” to broaden my photographic experience in order to produce an image that elicits some type of reaction from the viewer.