Senior Season Starts

It's spring!!  This means the start of senior picture season and, hopefully, the start of a lot of work for me.  I just took photos a few days ago for Alexandria, who is actually a 2010 graduate, not 2011, so I'm going to have to get them done quick quick.  She's a student at OLSH, and loved the photos I did of Dani and Janelle.

 I went to their house to shoot because they have tons of land and horses, which is she wanted in some of her pictures.  We started with some outdoors shots around her yard such as the one above.  It was bright but cloudy out, so I was using natural light for the majority of the shots, though I would occasionally pop my flash to brighten Alex a bit.

I recently realized that instead of duct-taping my backdrop to the wall like I had been, I could use some old stage light stands we had in the garage.  They work beautifully and made me feel quite professional!  So I packed up the stands and my Alien Bee and softbox and such into my car (a 20-year-old Toyota covered in bumper stickers from local bands) and was able to set everything up and shoot some nice portraits in their living room.  The image below reminds me just how much I love black and white.  I also love my softbox, which for this shot was off to the side to provide dramatic lighting.

After the indoor portraits we went back outside to finish up our session with the horses.  There are three of them total, but Annie is Alex's and she especially wanted photos with her.  Beautiful creatures, horses, though they weren't cooperating very well.  One kept nudging me - I think he was trying to figure out what the camera was!  Or maybe I was just a new person he wanted to play with.  It was difficult, but I ended with some absolutely beautiful shots of Alex either standing by or interacting with the horses.  I sepia-toned one with Annie in LightRoom (LOVE LightRoom!) and it looks great.  Alex's eyes are covered by her hair, but the tenderness in her expression and her hand on Annie's head make the shot really work.

Tomorrow I'm going to photograph at The Pittsburgh Opera  - it's just a couple shots before and after the performance, so during I'll be running down to my model Mary Beth's to do some pin-up and hopefully start on a nude/semi-nude tattoo project!  As for this blog thing...I'm really bad at updating it regularly, so I'm going to try to do so more often.  Describe my shoots in more detail and provide pictures, like I did just now and with Becka's shoot last time (incidentally, Becka and Alex go to school together).  Next step:  getting people to actually READ this thing!