Throw Back Thursday
When I photograph Holiday cards I love to shoot individuals of each person... the initial concept called for Kat to be standing closer to the fire place and hoolah hooping. As you can see from the frames that didn't make it, it just didn't work. We finally decided to move her to the center of the room and to just let her personality show without the prop and it lead to one of my favorite photographs of the year.
Kat's portrait from our 2013 Holiday shoot.
Our first shot, which held closely to our original concept... as you can see it just isn't quite right.
A step closer on lighting but as you can see... still off.
Teach it Tuesday.
Last week I had the chance to photograph my dear friends. The session took place at about 6pm with about an hour of direct sunlight left. In order to get the look we were going for I used two additional lights: an Alien Bee AB800 behind an Octobox on the right of the camera and a bare Lumipro LP180 behind Gabe and Liana on the left.
Gaba and Liana's photo out of the camera.
As you can see from the source photo, I have a couple of key issues. First, the Octobox and light stand can be seen in the photo which is bad but not as bad as the human hair on the sensor... you can see it on the left side of the screen as a curved line that goes from the top of the screen to the bottom. Using Photoshop and the 'clone stamp' tool I was able to paint new sky, grass, trees and sand into the appropriate spots. If you are not familiar with the clone stamp tool Aaron Nace has put together some fantastic examples of how to use it.
Here is the final version with the distracting elements removed and some minor changes to brightness and tone.
Gabe and Liana's final photo.