How to Develop Your Own Style as a People Photographer

As a photographer of people it can be difficult to develop your own style. It’s one of the questions I see often on the various groups or forums that I visit. It’s something that I’ve thought a lot about and I’ve actually come up with a way that works for me and I’ve implemented it. Keep in mind that it’s simply just my opinion. Though I’m primarily a people photographer I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in some other genres. Though it’s something that I think has worked for me, your mileage may vary. Also keep in mind that I’m coming from the perspective of an artistic people photographer. Sure, if your gig is pumping out hundreds of corporate headshots there are certainly conventions you’re going to need to adhere to. But that’s different. If someone is striving for their “own style” photographing people, they’re not hanging out a corporate headshot shingle.

Don’t listen to aesthetic opinions of other photographers

I know that it’s anathema to not reach out for criticism or “help” from other photographers, but I really think it’s the worst thing to do when it comes to aesthetic. One of the things that new photographers are told that they need to do to “get better” is to seek the aesthetic advice of other photographers. It’s an example of conventional wisdom that is just wrong. Don’t put up a photo in a public space and ask for criticisms or advice. Also, unfortunately, the world of photography is full of people who are more than happy to take it upon themselves to give you their unsolicited aesthetic opinions; something that has always baffled me.

Aesthetic–indeed art–is entirely subjective. Yes, I know there are those who have wasted a lot of money on an art degree of one kind or another who will argue with that, but it’s the truth. What may be visually appealing to one person can be trash to another.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t reach out to other photographers for technical advice. New photographers should definitely do that. For example instead of just posting a photo and asking for blanket advice, you’re far better off, say, posting it and stating what your goal was; lighting, editing, etc. and asking for advice on where it was missed and how to achieve it. But in order to do that you need to first know what your goal is.

How you edit does not determine photographic style

This is a common trap that many new photographers fall into. They try to achieve a personal style through editing. Some will spend money on Lightroom presets with that goal in mind and there are a lot of people out there that are willing to oblige them. One’s personal style is mostly created with how they take a photo. How they edit it has little if any bearing on the style. It’s why you can look at a Peter Lindbergh photo that is black and white and look at another that is color and you can tell that both are a Peter Lindbergh photo. Sure, a photographer may have an editing style that they have a propensity to use, but that is not what identifies their style.

Some photographers who are well known for their style don’t even edit their own photos. They hire it out. The editing styles of their photos may have changed over the years, but their style is still evident.

Don’t get hung up on rules

As an artistic people photographer there are no rules. This kind of goes back to the don’t listen to other photographers point I mentioned above. Some of the most annoying rules to me are the compositional rules or the cropping rules. Nothing gets ravaged more in a public forum than a photo that is cropped in the middle of an arm or leg, or at the top of the head. People hung up on these things are just silly.

Some of the most iconic artistic people photos violate all kinds of rules and would be savaged on your typical photographer’s forum. Some of the most amazing fashion photos have crops that would make a rules centric photographer loose their minds.

Again, don’t worry about rules. At all. Focus on making photos that YOU love and ignore the opinions of other photographers.

Step by step

OK, I’ve bloviated on my opinion on various things, but how exactly do you go about working on developing your own personal photographic style?

Here is my approach:

Create a folder on your computer and name it whatever you want. This folder is going to be with you forever. As you peruse the internet in your everyday life, anytime you come across a photo that you love, simply save it to that folder. Don’t think about it too much. If you dig the photo, save it. It doesn’t matter where you find it; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, fashion website, news website, forum, etc. It doesn’t matter where you come across the photos. If you really like it, just save it to that folder. But it’s important that you only save the photos that you really like; that really hit a nerve.

After some time–days, weeks, months–you will accumulate a lot of photos in the folder. When you open the folder you will see many photos that you’ve accumulated that you love. There will likely be a variety of different photos consisting of different types of people and editing, styles. It doesn’t matter. Though you may not be able to identify it at first, there will be a common thread throughout all of the photos. It may take some time to actually identify it. But trust me, there is a common thread. There has to be because all of the photos in the folder are there as a result of your personal aesthetic. There is only one you on a planet of 8 billion people. If all 8 billion people created their own folder of their favorite images there would be 8 billion distinctly different folders.

You will need to spend a fair amount of time in the folder looking at the images that you love. Eventually you’re going to realize the common thread. You may not be able to verbalize it, but you’ll know it when you see it. And when you create your own photos you’ll think of it. Make the photos that YOU love for your own reasons.

In time take some of your favorite photos that you’ve made and stick them in the folder. How do they hold up? It’s likely that initially, they won’t hold up in comparison to the other photos. If they don’t, then remove them. But it’s good to see how they stand up amidst all of the other photos that you love.

Eventually you will make some photos that absolutely hold their own according to your aesthetic. Even though they may look wildly different than many if not most of the photos in the folder, they will still ride on that common thread that runs through all of them. That thread is YOUR style.

I started this approach a few years ago and my folder contains many hundreds of images and I’m still adding to it.

Convert color photos to black and white using Photoshop

A lot of people may think to convert color photos to black and white using Photoshop that it’s as simple as sucking away all of the saturation. But it’s not that simple. At least not for me and what I like. You may like something else, but for me, an effective black and white conversion needs to be stylized to some degree. After all, by simply going the black and white route we’ve comfortably eschewed the realistic.

With few exceptions we all see the world in color.

This photo originally began with the intention of it being color. That’s what I had in mind when I first set out to make it. Here is the original version after post processing:

Original color processed image.
Original color processed image.

I like it. It is what I originally had in mind; a sort of festival style fashion thing out in some rolling sand dunes. I like the colors and I love the skin tones of Analiza, the model, and how they tie in to the surrounding environment.

Then I thought about how it would look in black and white. The more I thought about it, the more I felt it could look great. But I knew it couldn’t just be a matter of simply converting the image to grayscale or dropping the saturation all the way to zero which results in an image like this:

Example of color image set to complete desaturation.
Example of image completely desaturated.

To be honest, it’s not bad, but I don’t think it really pops. By that I mean there’s nothing really different about it other than it’s simply been desaturated to black and white.

Keep in mind that I’m not claiming this is the best way to convert images to black and white. There are a ton of ways of doing it and there are third party plug-in, too. This is just my way.

To convert the color image to black and white like I wanted, the first thing I did in Photoshop was to add a Black, White Gradient Map adjustment layer. That resulted in a look similar to the simple desaturation above, but with a bit more contrast. Next I added a Levels adjustment and moved the right adjustment slider inward just a tiny bit to open up the image a bit; take away some of the contrast. I did this because I wanted to pop the model a bit.

But the above step with the Levels adjustment brighted everything up a bit which I don’t really want. So I added a Curves layer and brought the middle of the curve down a bit to darken everything. I then painted out the adjustment over the model with a large soft brush (softest brush available) and a flow of 1%. I’m not too careful with this, I just paint over her and let it vignette out a bit. I then did Image > Apply Image, and checked the Invert box to better blend the mask.

Next I added a couple of curves layers to dodge and burn some highlights and shadows on the model to give her a bit more contrast. Again, I applied these with the softest brush available at a 1% flow. After this step, the bulk of the conversion is finished. But there’s still a few steps to just tweak it to what I like.

I created a new layer with a soft light blending mode and 50% gray: Layer > New > Layer > Mode Soft Light > check the box, Fill with soft light natural color. Again I used the softest brush and set to a flow of 1% I painted white into the highlights in her hair just a bit and painted over her face to pop it a bit. I also painted black over her lips and eyebrows to darken them a bit and to add a bit of contrast.

I then added a Photo Filter adjustment layer, using Warming Filter (85) with a density of 15%. It’s very subtle but it adds just a tiny bit of warmth. Trust me, it’s very subtle, but makes a lot of difference aesthetically. Technically, at this point, it’s no longer a “black and white” image, but for all intents and purposes, it is. I like it.

The next step was to add a vignette. To do this I used the Elliptical Marquee tool to make a selection around the model. I then added a Curves layer, pulled down the middle of the curve to darken the image, and then inverted the mask. Next I then added a Gaussian Blur on the mask to blur the transition. I blurred it a lot. For this image it was a radius of 792.7. I moved the mask around a bit to set it where I liked it best; Ctrl + T > click and drag.

The final step is something that I do often with black and white images. I add just a tiny bit of noise because I feel that it gives it a more film-like look and it just ties everything together. I do this by creating a new layer and then Filter > Noise > Add Noise. For this image I set it the amount to 2% Gaussian and checked the Monochromatic box.

That’s it. The final result is this:

This is the final result of the black and white conversion.
Finished black and white conversion.

Camera Brand Color Science Doesn’t Matter

Watching some of the discussions over at the blithering pedantic nonsensical mess that is the DPReview forums is enough to make reasonable people’s heads explode regarding camera brands and their respective “color science” and how it affects photographers. Generally, how one brand handles its colors vs another is the last thing you should be thinking about. With few exceptions, camera brand color science doesn’t matter.

First off, “color science” doesn’t mean squat to the average photographer. Color science is a real science and it’s mostly relevant only for engineers that are developing systems to deal with colors (in a nutshell). When the average photographer goes on about “color science” they’re not really talking about color science. They’re probably talking about color theory. They are two different things all together.

Then you get people talking about how brand X’s “color science” is better than brand Y’s. Or how people prefer one brand’s handling of color over another. Looking at the DPReview forums you’ll see people go on and on and on ….. And on about it.

But it’s mostly bullshit.

For a pretty good rundown on camera color science and why camera brand color science doesn’t matter, this video is pretty good:

In fact the only time that it might matter is if you’re shooting JPEG only and you don’t post process your photos. Then you’re going to see different brands produce slightly different looking colors. But even then it’s not really a big deal. However, if you shoot raw and you post process your files it doesn’t matter at all.

Period. End. Of. Story.

The reason it doesn’t matter at all in this circumstance is because people generally post process their images to their personal tastes and what looks most pleasing to them. You can take different photos by different cameras (in raw) and simply setting a white balance will remove almost any perceptible differences. To further add to consistency you could create a profile for each camera with something like an X-Rite ColorChecker and it will remove any perceptible difference. I guarantee that if you have three different brands of cameras and profile them, then post process them to your tastes you will not see any perceptible difference in the colors.

Anyone who claims they can look at processed raw files from profiled cameras and see a difference are simply full of shit.

Period. End. Of. Story.

That’s why when you look at photos by famous photographers who have changed brands of cameras you’re not going to suddenly see that their photos look any different. It’s because they generally post process their images to their taste and what they like.

So, at the end of the day if you shoot raw and post process your images to your taste concerning yourself over a brand’s particular “color science” is the last thing you should worry about.

Asking Strangers To Be Your Model

Finding models to photograph is difficult. But asking strangers to be your model is a valid approach. Sure, you can hit up an agency I suppose, but for hobbyists like me it can be an expensive thing. You can also peruse sites like Model Mayhem. Technically using Model Mayhem is asking strangers to be your model, but that comes with it’s own hurdles.

One of the biggest issues with finding models to photograph on Model Mayhem is that the majority of models on that site are just difficult to pin down. That’s a polite way of saying they are flaky. I mean real flaky, typically. Instagram can be similar.

But asking strangers to be your model who you come across in everyday life is a valid option. The real problem with this approach, however, is that it’s so easy to be taken the wrong way, thus it’s important to use the right verbiage. I’m not certain what the right verbiage is, but I do have a good idea of what I feel is the wrong verbiage. For example, walking up to someone and blurting out something like, “hey would you like to model for me?” would definitely be awful.

Don’t do that.

Really. Don’t do that.

As an example of how I’ve asked a stranger to be my model, one time I asked someone working in a store that I regularly shopped at if they would be interested in doing a shot for my 100 Strangers Project. She agreed and then as we talked a bit more and I explained what I do, she expressed an interest in doing a full blown session. It worked out well. In fact participating in the 100 Strangers project has helped me immensely with approaching people.

Most recently, a couple of months ago I was in another store returning something. The girl behind the counter who was processing my return was very interesting looking. I visited with her as she processed the return and then when she was done, I handed her a card and explained that I’m a photographer and asked if she would be interested in doing a casual shoot sometime. Right away she was interested. I didn’t try to get a commitment or anything like that at that time. I just handed her my card that has a link to my main portfolio page so that she could, “get an idea of what I do.” At no time did I use the word “model.”

I think it was later that day that she reached out to me to set up a time. As it turns out, she has some experience doing the modeling thing, and had an Instagram page to show for it. After looking at her Instagram page I almost immediately formulated an idea of what I wanted to do. It was going to be something vastly different than what she was currently showing. I had a location in mind and I wanted it to be a kind of rural, country-ish, saucy cowgirl thing as the primary look, plus a more flowing dress or something with a sundress, too. And I was wanting to do both off camera flash and natural golden hour shots as well.

So I met up with her, along with an assistant and my photo gear at one of my favorite places in the valley to shoot, Dimple Dell Park. One of the things that I like about Dimple Dell Park–heads up for local photographers–is that it’s almost always calm. On this day it was extremely windy all over the valley. I’m talking way too windy to even think about using a light with a modifier; even with an assistant. But here at the park it was almost completely calm. It must be the geographical nature of where it’s located; kind of down in a little basin.

It did take a few minutes for it all to start gelling–something that’s pretty common–but after a while she really started getting into a cool little groove.

Asking a stranger to be your model
First shot, using off camera flash to kill the ambient.

One of the first shots above.

I’ve found that when it comes to inexperienced models it’s always good to start them off leaning against or sitting on something. This fence was perfect. In fact with any model, no matter the experience level, I’ve found leaning against something is a great way to get started.

This shot is pretty good. She’s a great looking and her skin is just perfect.

But I always have a goal of making things light if possible. This next one below is when things started to loosen up a bit. After a quick change of clothes and more fence-sitting, I could see she was getting pretty comfortable with the crack of a smile. A little goofing around is a good thing.

A couple of shots in and Analiza started to relax.

I moved my light around, found the sky in the frame. I exposed for the sky and used the flash to fill in Analiza. I love these kinds of shots; mixing ambient with flash.

Sitting on a fence
I set exposure for the sky and used flash to fill in the model.

And then we started getting down to business. One thing that I’ve found that I can’t stress enough is to show the model some results on the back of the camera regularly and often. It really helps when they can see what’s being produced. They also get an idea of what we’re all going for. I show them about every third shot or so. Show them what’s going on and use it to explain what I’d like to see.

Now, we’re beginning to get someplace:

outdoor glamor shot.
Again, off camera flash.

Soon we did a change of clothes and moved to another location in the park.

Analiza model
Country Girl.

Thus far for all the shots I used an XPLOR 600PRO with a 38″ deep parabolic soft box. On the shot above I had an assistant hold up a large scrim camera left to negate some of the wildly changing lighting from clouds blowing by.

Earlier in the week I bought a funky looking cowboy hat for cheap. I gave it to Analiza and she rocked it quite well:

Model owning the pose.
Cowgirl chic. Again, off camera flash to kill the ambient a bit.

When you start wearing otherwise goofy looking cowboy hats and rocking an open shirt, one thing that is key as a model is to not hold back. The line between silly and cool is a thin one, and in order to pull it off I tell models they have to own it, flaunt it, and be absolutely unapologetic about it. It makes all the difference in the world. Plus, it helps with engagement. In the shot above, she almost looks like she’s challenging anyone looking at the pic. You got a problem?!

The following shot is pure natural light. The golden hour was perfect:

Golden hour beauty portrait.
Natural light golden hour.

And the following shot was a mix of ambient and off camera flash. The sun was low enough that I thought it would look better with a kiss of flash. I used the XPLOR 600PRO camera right with a Glow 70 degree Magnum reflector. That thing is a beast. I set it up about 15 feet away camera right:

Mixing natural light with flash.
Analiza on the fence.

We actually ended up coming back to the park a few days later to get in some looks with a sundress that we were not able to fit in on this shot. The following photos are from that visit:

Dancing in a sundress.
Dancing in a sundress

So, there you have it. I met a young woman at a store, asked if she would be interested in doing a photoshoot sometime, and these are the results. I think she did amazing and it was a lot of fun for both of us. We’ve since done another shoot that also turned out well. I’ll put up a post about that shoot soon.

Had it not been for me asking a stranger to be my model, none of this would have happened. So ask yourself, what are you waiting for?

Adobe CC Price Increases

Did Adobe just increase the price for their Lightroom Classic and Photoshop package from $9.99 to $19.99? Are they testing it? Just what is going on?

Well, the answer to that is that no one seems to know. At least at this point.

DPReview says that Adobe is testing to replace the $10/month Photography plan with a 1TB $20/month option. While PetaPixal flatly claims that the $10 plan is no longer available. In the world of Fstoppers, the whole thing apparently didn’t happen as there was nothing mentioned about it. On the other hand I reached out to Adobe’s customer support via chat and they told me that there is no test, is no increase, and that there are some “technical issues from our side.”

One has to wonder how a technical issue could result in a page offering something that was never before available while at the same time removing some that has always been available could occur, but hey, I suppose it could happen.

Personally I tend to agree with Adobe’s official statement; it was a test. I also feel that there was sufficient blowback that they thought the better of it. CSR reps don’t just spew out a line relating to something as huge as this without it being passed down.

Generally, that is.

Here’s the deal. Adobe is a huge corporation who at the end of the day owes their allegiance to their shareholders. Love it or hate it, that is the reality. Their existence is solely predicated on the basis of making money for shareholders. Period. End. Of. Story. I don’t have a problem with that. That’s how capitalism works. If not for that concept, there would be no Lightroom and Photoshop. We’d all be stuck with Giimp or some other nonsensical freeware. But all of that being said, Adobe needs to walk a fine line. They have undoubtedly increased profits since the advent of the subscription model; a model that I personally love. But if they bump it to $20 a month they will lose a lot of people. Their pitch seems to be that with the $20 you’ll get 1TB of cloud storage instead of the 20GB that currently comes with the $10 plan.

So what. Personally, I couldn’t care less about a single KB of cloud storage that Adobe might offer. The way I look at it, Adobe is a company that makes its bread and butter mostly as a developer of applications for creatives, not selling storage space in the cloud. As a photographer, the only thing from Adobe that I care about is Lightroom and Photoshop. If they start charging $20 per month for me to use Lightroom and Photoshop I’ll probably need to reassess my relationship with Adobe. No, I might not bail right away, but I’ll definitely start laying the groundwork for as easy and painless of an exit as possible.

Trust me, Adobe. You don’t want that. No, Adobe doesn’t care about what I will do, but I think that I represent a huge segment of their user base; enthusiast/professional users. After all, for photographers, Lightroom and Photoshop are the industry standard and contrary what many like to pretend, these are absolutely the best overall tools available for many reasons. Yes, there are other options out their, but they pale in comparison. The workflow possible with Lightroom and Photoshop is difficult to replicate in any other ecosystem.

But that’s changing. As I write this there have been a number of other vendors who are starting to become competitive. I am confident that within 5 years there will be fully competitive alternatives available.

What else am I confident of? Within 5 years you’ll be hard pressed to find any meaningful alternative that isn’t a subscription model.

So, there’s that.

The Best Way To Upload Images To Facebook Part III

Way back in April of last year I wrote this post on the best way to upload images to Facebook. For a long time the method worked great. Then Facebook, being the moving target they are, changed it so that the method resulted in horribly fubared images. Trying to go back to uploading images the old way which was basically resizing them to, say, 2048px on the long side if in landscape or, if in portrait, 960px and then saving as JPEG with the sRGB color profile embedded also resulted in just horrible compression artifacts from Facebook.

This was in December of 2018 when it all went to the crapper. At that time, after much experimenting I found out that the best way to upload images to Facebook was this method, which was basically just uploading a full size and full resolution image; making sure to not optimize it in any way. It seemed that by doing so minimized the damage done by Facebook’s compression algorithm; by optimizing the image before uploading it, it essentially got hit twice, once by you, once by Facebook.

I think.

But, either way, it resulted in the best image quality, nearly equal to that of the first method.

Well, it now seems that Facebook has tweaked their algorithm once again. Now it seems that the best way to upload images to Facebook is, again, resizing them to either 2048px on the long side or 960 on the top/bottom if in portrait mode.

Oy, Facebook.

Originally, uploading them in PNG, i think resulted in them not being compressed at all because the algorithm seemed to only concern itself with JPEGs, but I don’t know if that’s the case.

So, at the end of the day, for best quality, it’s probably best to use the method I wrote about originally. That method is capped by saving them in PNG while preserving details. The reason I think this will work the best is because PNG is a lossless format when saving. Yes, they are converted to JPEG by Facebook, but they are only hit the one time rather than the twice it would be if you save them to JPEG before uploading them.

DP Review Discussion Forums Suck

Yes, DP Review discussion forums suck. It’s not really surprising in and of itself because most online forums suck; it’s just the nature of the internet I suppose. The reason most online forums suck is because of crappy moderation.

But this is a photography blog, what gives with this disrespect for online forums? Well, as you probably know, DP Review is digital photography gear news and review site. It generally has pretty good information. Their online forums, like all online forums, are mostly crap, but there can be some very useful information to be had in some of them. The most useful for me were the forums on lighting, retouching, and portraiture. Each one of those forums has a small number of regular participants that are truly experts in their given field, and they demonstrated it often by example.

But somewhere along the line DP Review apparently took it upon themselves to crack down on uncivil behavior; perhaps they passed word down to their mods, who knows. Combined with huge page long rules for each forum along with mods who may or may not have reasonable notions of what “civil” is and it’s pretty much guaranteed that DP Review’s discussion forums are going to fall into a deep suck hole.

Anyway, the DP Review discussion forums have now largely lost their appeal and usefulness.

In my opinion here’s how DP Review (and all online forums) can become tolerable, and more importantly more useful . It’s very simple, really. Outside of stalking, doxxing, personal threats, and off topic responses, anything should pretty much go.

In other words, treat people like adults and don’t try to police civility. Just let people easily block those they don’t want to interact with. That way, the system will take care of itself.

Really, it would.

A Behind The Scenes Glamor Session In A Small Home Studio

This is a look at a behind the scenes glamor session in a small home studio.

I’ve been wanting to do some kind of full on glamor stuff for a while, now, but I haven’t really had the means to do it. When I say means I’m talking about the talent needed beyond any skills I may have as a photographer. If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around what I’m talking about, I’m talking about a good hair stylist and a good makeup artist. For the kinds of shots I had in mind I felt that I could get away without a wardrobe person, but as far as hair and makeup, no way. Not if I wanted to do it right. Not to mention a good model or models.

I have a friend, Kasey, from a martial arts gym that I frequent who I knew does hair and makeup professionally, and I’ve been talking with her over the past few months about what I was wanting to do. She was on board, but it just seemed that I could never get a model lined up. I have a couple of really good model friends, but it was just hard to get them nailed down.

One day at the martial arts gym I met Angie who was a new student. Right away I thought she would make a great subject for my 100 Strangers Project, so I hit her up about it. She was really open to the idea, but she went on to say that she was a model that was represented by an agency.

Go figure.

We got to talking and I showed her some of my work and she flat out said that she would like to do something with me. I then told her about my idea and Kasey the HMUA who was also a member of the gym, and it all just started falling into place.

Side note: Don’t be afraid to approach people you want to photograph.

Anyway, we created a shared Pintrist board for ideas and went from there.

Over the next few days I worked it out with Kasey the HMUA and she said she had a friend who was a great hair stylist who she thought would like to get in on it as well.

Hell, yeah. So, we set up a date with Angie the model, Kasey the MUA, and Paul the hair stylist.

I had already set the notion that I really wanted to do a full on head and shoulders glam type of thing as a priority and then do something else as a secondary thing; a couple different looks, one standard glam and one using a masquerade type of mask. Angie was really on board with that and had shown me a bunch of ideas on the Pintrist board.

On a Sunday morning Angie stopped by the house with a suitcase full of clothes and a couple of cool looking masks. After a cup of coffee, Paul and Kasey showed up and they started working on Angie in my kitchen (yeah, home studio guy here).

Hairstylist Paul Chance and Angie Tani

After Paul got done doing his thing Kasey went to work.

Makeup artist, Kasey Kasai

After we got everything down it to the studio. I don’t have a large studio, but I’ve managed to make it work.

My plan from the beginning was to use a pretty simple light setup; an on axis 38 inch deep parabolic fairly close and at about a 45 degree downward angle with a reflector about chest high to bounce a little fill.

Equipment:

  • 1 Flashpoint XPLOR 600PRO
  • 38″ Glow EZ Lock Deep Parabolic Softbox
  • 1 Lastolite 30″ reflector

I used gray seemless paper as a backdrop and flagged either side with a couple of black V-flats to contain the light as much as possible. It resulted in a kind of nook. It worked pretty well.

Here are some of the resulting shots:

Angie Head and Shoulders. ISO 100, 85mm, f11, 1/200
Glamor shot of Angie with the mask
Angie With Mask ISO 100, 85mm, f11, 1/200

Kasey got in on the mask action, too. On this shot no bottom reflector, just the softbox nearly on axis.

Kasey with the mask
Kasey With Mask ISO 100, 50mm, f11, 1/200

And finally this other one of Angie. Like the above shot, this too without a bottom reflector and just the softbox nearly on axis.

Angie Cool ISO 100, 50mm, f11, 1/200

All in all I’m pretty happy with these shots. I got a lot of good ones and Angie got a couple of ones that she handed off to her agency for their website.

At the end of the day it was a great experience. We all had a lot of fun and I learned a ton. Angie and I have already started working on some ideas for the summer; editorial style fashion experiments, and a little project I’ve been wanting to do for some time.

And, of course, the obligatory goofing around selfie!

The crew!
The crew after a good day’s work.

Girl In a Skirt Project Hits a Block

Girl In a Skirt Fights the wind.
ISO 200 10mm f10 1/500 sec

Continuing the Girl In a Skirt project, I’m coming across a huge challenge and it has nothing to do with anything camera related, lens related or anything technical. The hardest part is finding skirts. We bought this skirt in Moab and haven’t been able to find another anywhere. Short, mid-thigh flowing skirts are almost impossible to find anywhere. We’v traipsed allover the city trying to find something kind of like what’s in this photo, but different.

None. Nada. Zilch. Next stop, probably some second hand stores.

Girl In a Skirt

Girl In a Skirt looking at red rocks. ISO 200 10mm f9.0 1/640 sec

I’m starting a new project called Girl In a Skirt. I’m not quite sure where it’s going to lead other than it will feature, well, a girl in a skirt. But I am thinking maybe the same girl in various different skirts and locations and shot with different styles. I don’t know. But I like the idea of a unified project to give some direction in which to go. In reality it’s probably going to evolve as I go. The only thing I do know is that it will be a girl in a skirt.

This particular one was shot with my  Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM which I’m really growing to like.