This past Tuesday I drove with Erik and Selmira over to Missouri Valley to take some engagement shots. Erik and Selmira are graduating from UNO and will be moving to Boston, MA in a week! Big changes!
We met up with my friend Chris Amato once we got to Mo Valley. Chris took us around to several great locations around town and assisted me with lighting.
The area around his studio is full of a lot of great locations. In this shot I used a wide-angle lens to capture a unique perspective.
For these next to shots we went down to a junk dealer down the street from Chris’s house. I used several lights to bring out the cars and to put a focus on Selmira.
This shot comprises 31 images. This is shot with a telephoto lens and put together like a multi-level panorama to give a nice blurred out background that otherwise wouldn’t be possible with a wider lens.
This was taken on some train tracks South of Mo Valley. I setup the shot to get Erik and Selmira in silhouette and waited until their heads were in negative space. I just love the way their hands and the electric pole form a cross!
Using small strobes can be a great way to add a dynamic feel to an image. For these next few shots I used bare AA powered speedlights to offset the sunlight and used a low camera angle with a wide angle lens to make them appear larger than life. My goal was to make sure that their heads and torso’s were in negative space and didn’t have to fight for attention with the girder bridge in the background.
A playful shot. I asked Selmira to tug on Erik’s tie while he fought her a bit. The clouds whisped in and gave us a beautiful background!
On the way out to the bridge I noticed this sign and immediately got an idea of how I wanted to shoot it. On the way back we stopped and quickly grabbed the shot.
Our last location was an area between Mo Valley and Honey Creek. In this shot the sun is to my back providing a great shadow behind them. I underexposed the sunlight and used a couple speedlights from the right to light Erik and Selmira.
