I thought I’d go back to my roots, so-to-speak, with this post and provide more detailed information on how the images were created. This first image was shot as one of the promotional images with Jamie sitting on a window-seat inside of one of the gorgeous rooms available to us in the castle wearing a dress made by Buf Reynolds. For lighting this shot I used a Paul Buff Einstein unit with a 20″ Beauty Dish to camera left. I was going for the Rembrandt lighting pattern on her face. I’m really starting to love adding shadows and am getting away flat face lighting. For a slight fill, I used a 42″ white reflector from below angled up. I wanted the window behind her to blow out and add some rim around her. Outside is a large stone overhang so I set my exposure to ISO-400 F3.2 1/125 to get the ambient light where I wanted it. I then added the light from the Einstein to expose the front of her.

This image of Brittany was taken toward the end of the day in a design by Jane Round. It was just before the show and we wanted to get as many of the models and clothing shot as we could. Because of the limited space I stuck with my Einstein and beauty dish. For the shots taken against this green wall and the red wall, which you’ll see later, I chose a mid-range aperture to give me more depth of field while still keeping the power from my light manageable.
ISO-100 F7.1 1/200

This image was also taken as part of the promotional images in September. I was there again with Anthony and Marlon. I ran up the stairs to look for a location to shoot in. Then, as I came back down the winding stair case I was watching my feet as I went so I didn’t trip and I saw the way the stairs wound and created lines. I grabbed the beauty dish with a diffusion sock and placed it as high as I could get it, just over the banister in the middle of the stair case. Anthony helped hold it at a slight angle to get it a little closer and I stood on the stairs as close to the banister as I could. I asked Jamie to come over to the stairs and to lay down on them. I placed her body, hands and feet where I wanted them to get the shot. In post, I flipped this first image upside down because I liked the way the lines worked better from that perspective. I was actually standing at what would be the top of the picture for this shot.
ISO-100 F6.3 1/200

This is a pure natural light shot taken outside the castle with Jamie in another dress by Buf Reynolds. I love the way the sun was coming up over the building and decided to remove my lens hood to play with the flare. The flare in this picture is straight-out-of-camera (SOOC).
ISO-100 F2.8 1/200

This shot of Jamie is also purely natural and was taken shortly after the last one. I repositioned Jamie to get the rim light and to let the open sky light her face. I just love light like this.
ISO-100 F2.8 1/160

This shot of Jamie in a dress by Sabrina Jones was done inside one of the bathrooms inside of the castle. I placed an Einstein light to Jamie’s right and bounced it off a white-tile wall. I stood to Jamie’s left and shot her in the mirror while keeping her back in the shot as an achor. I chose to shoot this at F8 to carry more focus through the shot.
ISO-100 F8 1/100

This is Nimoy. A wonderful model who recently moved to NYC. She has always struck me as a very strong and proud woman. This was to be a headshot as she hadn’t yet put on any of the designer’s clothing. So, I put a 7″ reflector on the Einstein and shot it from camera left to get a loop light pattern on her face with a lot of drama. I included the wall sconce in the shot and set my exposure in order to get it to expose properly. I added the flash power to match that exposure.
ISO-100 F6.3 1/60

These next two shots were taken at the same location but using different perspectives and focal lengths allows them each to have their own personality. This first shot of Dani in a dress by Sabrina Jones was taken at 50mm with the Einstein and Beauty dish. Which, I used quite a bit on this shoot primarily because I didn’t have an assistant to lug anything else around and also because it was very crowed inside the castle. Like all of my other on-location work, my first step here was to get my ambient exposure. To do that, I take my CyberSync off my camera and adjust the settings until the environment looks how I want. This is more “too taste” as typically I underexpose the ambient to some degree depending on what I am going for. After getting my exposure nailed down, I put the CyberSync back on and set up the flash. In this case, the beauty dish was placed to slight camera left.
ISO-100 F4 1/200

This shot of Jennifer in a design by Shawntelle Kullman taken at the same location as Dani, was shot at 24mm. Because I had sky and more of the building in this shot I reset my ambient exposure and flash power in order to get the look I was going after. In post, I removed another white bench that was towards the right-end of the frame. Whenever I edit I always look for any distractions from my subject and remove anything necessary. If I can do it in-camera then I will, and I always advocate getting it as close to perfect in camera. Post processing shouldn’t be a crutch.
ISO-100 F6.3 1/200

Another shot of Nimoy, this time in a dress by Jennifer Pool. This dress was yellow, the stairs were red, and the wood was brown with a red tint to it. The colors just didn’t go together very well so black and white as the perfect option. I used the color sliders in Lightroom in order to adjust the luminance of the various color channels to produce the final image to draw the eye through it as I wanted.
ISO-200 F3.5 1/100

I absolutely love this shot of Sydnee in a dress by Sabrina Jones, it has a beautiful classic look to it. I asked Sydnee to stand on the edge of the window frame and exposed for the ambient light coming in from the outside to light the sheer curtains. I used the beauty dish from high camera left as the key light. I wanted sharp focus so I shot it at a relatively tight aperture.
ISO-200 1/200 F9

In this shot I placed her in a position to be framed by the stained glass behind her and started with a large aperture in order to blur the background. I set the ambient exposure to allow a good illumination from both the existing lighting and the window. I then set the flash at the exposure necessary to light the model.
ISO-400 F3.2 1/100.

Another shot of the beautiful Dani shot under a tree just outside the castle. For this shot I chose to shoot wide open with just a kiss of flash from my beauty dish to camera right.
ISO-100 F2.8 1/100

This very playful shot of MinDee was inspired by her playing around with a friend of her’s who was to my left. While I was reviewing a shot I had taken she took on a similar pose while she was joking with her friend. I asked her to stop and go back to it then we worked it into this be adjusting it slightly. Most often, the best shots come from relaxing and just having fun.
ISO-100 F5 1/200

I love the intensity of Katie’s eyes in this shot. She is wearing a dress by Jennifer Pool. I love the way the colors in the dress play against the colors in the background, her lips, and her eyes.
ISO-100 F4.5 1/200

This shot of Julie in a dress by Jane Round came out beautifully with a great shadow from the beauty dish.
ISO-100 F5 1/200

This is another pure natural light shot of Jamie wearing Buf Reynolds at the front door of the castle.
ISO-100 F2.8 1/160

The only lighting I had with me was the Einstein 640 with a 20″ Beauty Dish that I had used on my shoot earlier that evening. AJ had some extra lights he offered me to use but I decided I’d see what I could do with the one light. Quite a while ago AJ told me that less is more, and he definitely was right! With AJ’s suggestion I setup the dish a good distance away from the subject. Using a dish this far away more-or-less loses the liquid like light quality of a dish as when used up close, but it makes it a small source that is perfect for dynamic shadows cast against white seamless! Using it so far away also allows the light to spread out to cover the background and the distance allows the light fall off from one side to another to remain relatively consistent.

The models we had were absolutely fantastic. Each one offered a different personality and style and I had a blast photographing them. One of my favorite shots from the night came when Sara Larson told me she used to be a dancer. I love dancers! I asked her what she could do with a jump. And, with her first jump we caught this image below. On the first try! That happens so rarely! We took several more frames after this but decided that the first was the best and moved on to different setups.

The clothing came from designers Jennie Mason and Buf Reynolds. The jacket was loaned from Bellwether Boutique.

Later that evening I came across an image that reminded me of James Dean. I absolutely loved the idea of shooting a James Dean concept. I’ve worked with so few male models and was looking forward to finding someone who fit. I checked Chris’s images online and decided he would do well for the shoot. I presented the idea to him and he accepted. After a few weeks of planning, getting clothing, and finding a hair dresser (Sarah Bolter) we finally had a date set for our shoot!

We met up downtown and Sarah did Chris’s hair while sitting outside a building near Nomad. Not only did Chris leave his facial hair scruffy (along with bringing a razor, just in case) he also let his hair grow out more to help achieve the look. He also laid off the body building supplements for a few days prior to have less of a pumped look and studied James Dean in order to take on the persona.

I explained to Chris that I didn’t want to try and copy any of James Dean’s iconic images, but rather wanted to portray a similar persona in a similar but more modern look. I believe that when you try to outright copy someone the best you can ever be is second best. Use others for inspiration, but never outright attempt to duplicate their work. With this shoot I didn’t want anyone to say “Nice Job trying to replicate James Dean” but rather “Hey, this reminds me of James Dean!”. Consequently, we did get a comment from a local stylist that the set is “so James Dean”. And, that was without me mentioning anything in the image or album that James Dean was part of the concept. Mission Accomplished.

While we were there, a young kid and his girlfriend were tagging. Chris talked him in to writing Class of 2010 on the wall. He used only red spray paint. Earlier I had seen a paint brush on the top floor of the building so I asked Stephanie if she did any art or painting. She did, so I got the brush and had Stephanie act like she was painting the text on the wall. I added additional shading in post processing to liven up the effect.

After these shots we went up another floor. I wanted some shots with balanced light on the downtown skyline but my strobes weren’t enough to get the job done and it was extremely windy. All of the windows in the building are broken out and this floor was completely open. I ended up not liking any of the images because of the way the wind was blowing around her hair and because it was making it difficult to keep the umbrellas on her.

After the building we went to a football field and Chris shot Stephanie and I setup the lighting for him. By this point it was getting late and we didn’t get as many clothing changes as we wanted so we decided we’d shoot Stephanie a second time out near her house a few weeks later. Chris is old friends with Stephanie’s family so they got special treatment! I love shooting and Stephanie is a great model so I don’t mind shooting her more at all!

On August 19th we met again at Stephanie’s home out in Yutan. They have a great area right by their house with a railroad so we started there and got a lot of fantastic natural light shots.

Next, we went to their friend’s farm and shot on a beautiful old bridge which goes over a ravine with another railroad track below it. After Chris shot a little while we decided we needed a strobe to really show off the stormy clouds that were moving in. While Chris ran back to my bag to get what I needed I shot this natural light portrait.

He brought back my 580exII, a 45″ shoot through umbrella, and a long TTL cord. Since we were running short on time and the storm was coming fast I wanted to bang this set out. I asked him to point the umbrella toward the flowers behind Stephanie to light them up which feathered the light on to her for a very flattering and even look.

Our next stop was the highway. I wanted to take a picture with Stephanie sitting in the middle of the road. During our short drive I noticed how magnificent the clouds were looking and we found a fence that was in the direction of the best clouds. I used the same setup for this shot as the last one.

Then, we turned around and waited for traffic to clear and I asked Stephanie to sit on the road. She laid down instead, but it worked! I told Chris where I needed him with the light. I had him hold it over the camera axis in a bounce configuration to spread the light more evenly from head to toe.

We started off the night doing some ambient light shots under an overhang. Chris is working on his technical knowledge so I instructed him on how to begin planning a shot that will be lit with strobes. He started by taking some photographs of Anna in the ambient light. He had to manage his exposure manually while paying attention to the varying amounts of sunlight as the clouds passed between him and the sun. Once he saw how the ambient light looked we started adding strobes.

We added one strobe to light the model from the front with a shoot through umbrella. Then, we added an additional strobe for rim light. Chris hasn’t yet posted any pictures of Anna from this portion of the night.

We next brought Nicole in and varied the lighting. For Nicole we used a hard light on her to send a shadow on to the wall and another light with an umbrella to light her face.

While we were shooting Nicole a gentleman came out of a garage on the alley and asked us if we’d be interested in shooting the girls with an old Corvette! So, we finished up with Nicole outside and I went in to see what the car and location would look like. The location itself wasn’t very interesting. It had horrible fluorescent lighting, a poor backdrop, and other cars in the shot.

I asked if it would be possible to move the Vette but he said no. Chris still wanted to shoot with the Vette so we brought our gear and the girls inside. Starting out, Chris wanted to position one girl on each side of the car and shoot from the front. There wasn’t much room so he grabbed my wide angle lens while I setup a few reflective umbrellas to give us some even lighting for both girls. We weren’t going for anything too stylized, just decent lighting.

After a little while Chris grabbed the umbrellas and stuck them behind the car and positioned the girls right behind the car to create a shot similar to my hair flipping shot from the previous Benson shoot. I pulled a monopod out of my camera bag and stuck a strobe and Cybersync on it to provide rim light behind the model’s head. After a few shots I went over to Chris to look on the back of his camera and saw that there was a fluorescent light still on above the front store windows and it looked like a comedic arrow hat going right through the model’s head!

I went up front and uplugged that light while thinking about what could be changed with the main lighting. The dual reflective umbrellas weren’t creating the kind of light that I would have liked to see on the girls. Chris had been shooting with his EF 70-200 F2.8 lens from outside the showroom. I noticed that the wall behind him and the girls was painted white and had several large doors that were also painted white. I told him to hold on a second while I changed up the lighting. I removed the reflective umbrellas and closed the doors so that Chris would have a very small slit to shoot through. I then placed the strobes bare and fired against the white wall and doors to act like large fill cards to light the girls. This lighting was much more even and looked a lot better.

I yelled to Chris a couple times from the front of the car that I’d like a turn to shoot this setup but he apparently didn’t hear me and by 8pm the owner of the shop was getting a bit restless so we packed it up and headed back outside. So, unfortunately I don’t have any photos from the first 2 hours of the shoot!

After leaving the garage the girls were getting hungry. Nicole was done modeling and just wanted to eat but Anna and Jessie were loving it and wanted to keep shooting. Chris said I could shoot the rest of the night.

Outside there was a wall of ivy with some red painted doors. About twelve feet in front of that was an old wooden electrical pole. I had in my head what I wanted my shot to look like and began setting it up. I started out with a single bare flash pointed at the ivy and the red doors. I took a few test shots of just the background to get the light positioned exactly how I wanted it.

Then, I setup another bare flash to camera right and behind the pole to rim out the model and the pole. I pulled out my Speedlight Pro Kit and stuck it on a boom with a strobe and asked Chris to hold it while I put Anna in position. I chose Anna for this shot because I thought her gray dress with yellow accent would look good against the green and red. I took a few test shots and had Chris move the rim light back and around Anna’s position to keep the light from hitting any of her face. I couldn’t get the rim light in the position I wanted to have no light on Anna’s face from it so I decided to have Anna look to camera left while I shot so that the rim wouldn’t reach her face. That worked out perfectly. I started Anna out with her forearm against the pole and she worked it to give me many different choices for our final image. From start to finish, including setup and pre-visualization, this setup took 20 minutes.

Next, I wanted to shoot over by some large ferns growing on the side of the building. This is something you normally don’t see in Omaha, especially in the middle of the city! I looked at the girls to see what they were each wearing and decided Jessie outfit would best fit the look I wanted for this image. There were some large broken branches laying on the ground where I wanted to shoot her so I dragged those away but kept one clean looking log that I thought would make a nice posing tool. I setup one bare rim light behind and to camera left so that it would light the foliage while providing minor rim on Jessie. I had Chris boom the Speedlight Pro Kit over Jessie’s head and posed her with one leg on the log. I laid on the ground with my wide angle lens and snapped some pictures while Jessie moved through some poses and gave me some variation. She did a fantastic job tonight, especially considering it was her first time modeling. From start to finish, including setup and pre-visualization, this setup took less than 10 minutes.

Earlier in the day we had horribly overcast skies and it was threatening to rain. In traditional Nebraska fashion, the weatherman were wrong and we got nothing. This shot was inspired by a similar shot done by Don Giannatti. This was a very simple setup with only the Speedlight Pro Kit boomed overhead.

After Jessie and I were done Anna pointed out an old brick wall in the alley that I had noticed on a previous trip here location scouting. It was getting late, already a quarter to 9 so I decided to make this last shot with a very simple one-light setup. I had Chris grab a 43″ shoot through umbrella and boom it over Anna and roughly on axis with the camera. I posed Anna with her back leaning against the wall and her hips positioned further away than what would be natural. I like unnatural posing! It brings something to the image that you normally don’t see.

Next, Anna said she wanted to do a pose with her chest facing the wall. She turned around against the wall and assumed a perfect pose. By this time our light was almost gone and I was having a very tough time focusing. I tried to grab focus a few times on her shoulder against her hair because of the higher contrast. But, back at the computer I found that my favorite image from this sequence was out -of-focus! Knowing that Anna really liked this pose I didn’t want to disappoint her so I decided I’d do what I could to make it a good image. After several rounds of high-pass filtering and sharpening I turned it into an image with a soft-focus look that looked planned rather than a mistake!

All in all, I had a fantastic time shooting yesterday! Anna and Jessie both are anxious to shoot again as well!

The shop owner drove his old caddy into a small lot between his building and Triangle Body Shop. The car was a bit dusty so I asked Chris to see if they had a california duster or anything. He went into the shop and never came back, I think he got involved shooting Anna and forgot! So, I shot Deanna and the caddy and later removed the car dust with Photoshop. I started with a single speedlight in a Speedlight Pro Kit held by Zach Hollowell. It was positioned above Deanna’s face and I asked Zach to keep it inline with where her nose would be after the hair flip. After a few test shots I added a bare strobe to subject left for rim and added a second bare strobe to camera right to add a little bit extra across the front of the car. Finally, I placed a 4th bare flash behind the car to illuminate the side of the building and provide a little more visual interest. Behind Deanna there is a large, and ugly, smoke stack coming off the corner of the building. I positioned myself with my 17-55mm lens so that I would have a unique angle on Deanna and the caddy while placing her in front of the stack to hide it in my photo.

After shooting Deanna and the caddy Zach and I took Adia down to an old truck sitting just off the street near a white building. The sun was beating down straight from camera right, almost perpendicular. I pulled out my 5-in-1 reflector and Zach held the diffuser behind the cab just out of frame right with a zebra tr-grip reflector held just out of bottom frame. Shooting this shot without flash was obvious since we had the sun as our lighting and this also allowed me to shoot at F2.8 for limited depth of field since I didn’t have to worry about sync speed. The diffuser held so close allows it to do it’s job and the zebra reflector adds a little bit of gold light.

Once Chris and Jeremy were done shooting Anna inside the garage they brought her up to the caddy. Then, Deanna and Adia’s sister brought her large snake to get its picture taken! Anna did a great job of letting the snake crawl all over her! We had a similar flash setup here to the first shot, except the two front strobes are now on either side of the car and the rear building light was pulled back further to illuminate more of the building side. This position also made it possible to get either flare or rim light around Anna’s head depending on your position. Chris was shooting with Jeremy’s CyberSync trigger so I stuck mine back on my camera and pulled off a few shots as well.

After getting Anna’s shot finished we shot Adia on the caddy with the snake. I had on my 70-200mm lens but wasn’t liking what I was getting. I went to change back to my 17-55mm to get a different angle and by the time I did Adia was off the car! We all decided we’d move on a few blocks away to an alley to finish off the day.

As we started getting things together I noticed how the sun was coming in through one of the store windows just up the street. I grabbed Deanna because I thought her dress would offer nice contrast with the building and I posed her next to it so the sun would be directly behind her. I asked Chris to hold an umbrella up on my right pointed right at Deanna’s face and I placed a strobe to the left for rim light while being sure to have it back far enough to not blow out any portion of Deanna’s face. After this shot was taken I moved Diana over to the building to lean against it for another pose but at that time her sister came running back down saying that her car was towed! She had parked in a bar’s parking lot with towing signs but figured it wasn’t busy so there was no reason to tow. I’m sure that bar owner gets a kick back and I’ll make sure to never go there…. not that I’ve ever been there before… but still. Deanna had driven all of the girls to the location so they all piled back in to go back to Chris’s house to get their cars and all of us photographers wrapped up, loaded up my truck and headed back as well. The shoot only lasted 1.5 hours but we came home with a lot of great images!

We planned the maternity shoot to take place last Sunday, June 21st. Early in the day I scouted a few locations and planned all of my shots. We planned to start the shoot at 7 PM. The sun was scheduled to go down by 9 PM and the location was to be in an aboretum with heavy tree coverage. I had planned to have the sun peaking through the leaves to give me pockets of bright light in my shots. I also planned to take a shot on a rolling green hill with beautiful sky and puffy white clouds as the background; Sara would be perched on top of the hill as if on the horizon.

Unfortunately we didn’t reach the aboretum until nearly 8 PM! We started out photographing by an old willow tree then moved into the wooded areas only to find that the sun was no longer creating the gorgeous pockets of light that I had seen earlier that afternoon. We attempted a shot by a bridge under the cover of the thick greenery but the ambient exposure was so low that my flashes would have been the entire light source and that wasn’t the look I was going for. Not only that but it had become very humid and the bugs were enjoying us a little more than we were enjoying them.

We decided to come back to the wooded area on another day and instead set out for the hill to create the photograph that I had pre-visualized there. When we got to the hill we were in for another let down. The beautiful clouds from that afternoon were gone and we were left with boring blue sky! Yes. B-o-r-i-n-g.

At that point we were about ready to call it a day but I wanted to get at least one usable shot that I had pre-planned. The last shot, near the parking lot, consisted of lattice work and ivy. My plan was to back light it and have Sara in front of it. We got down to the parking lot and I started setting up my flashes for the shot. I put two bare flashes directly behind the lattice work and set each to 1/2 power. I then put together my Speedlight Pro Kit 6 and attached it to a monopod for Chris to hold over Sara’s face for my main light. After getting the exposure nailed down I got the shot I was after!

We had planned to finish the night at an old abandoned farm West of our home but with the sun nearly set we decided that would have to happen another day. A security guard drove past us, parked near the gate, and closed one door as if to ask us to hurry it up. We packed our gear, put it back in my truck and headed home.

The next day around noon Sara and I loaded the kids into my truck and drove out to the farm to create our photographs. I grabbed my camera and some gear from my truck and we headed into the old barn. Our two kids, Leigh and Ethan, came with us and did a pretty good job of keeping themselves entertained and out of trouble. Once in the barn I took some exposure readings and set up a 42″ shoot through umbrella with two speedlights in order to keep my recycle times down. I set each speedlight at 1/2 power and raised it on the light stand. I then put a white reflector on the ground to stop the brown dirt from reflecting in her skin. I took quite a few shots as Sara and I tried various poses and locations for her to stand near the door.

Once we had our inside shot finished we moved her to the middle of the doorway. With the high noon sun we had very hard light coming in through the doorway, halfway illuminating her face. To stop this I grabbed the reflector and wedged it above her in the doorway. I held the reflector with one hand and shot with the other. Once we had the doorway shot finished we moved to the outside.

The South side of the barn had diagonal slanting planks that I wanted to use as the background of the shot. But, it was in horribly ugly noon sunlight! I didn’t want to compromise here and I knew what I needed to do in order to produce the image I had in my mind. I wanted to beat the sun and cast my own shadows onto the side of the barn while having flattering light on my wife’s face. I went back to the truck to re-gear. I swapped my wide angle lens for a telephoto and grabbed a second light stand. In order to get the hard shadows cast onto the barn and in order to overpower the sun I set each flash up about 6 feet apart and aimed at where Sara would be standing. I zoomed each of them to 50mm which would give me somewhat of a spotlight on her upper body. I added my reflector to the ground, just out of my frame to block the green light that would have been cast from the grass. I took a reading with my Sekonic L358 flash meter and I was at 1/160 F25 ISO 100 with my two flashes combined with the sun. The sun’s exposure alone would have been 1/100 F16 ISO 100 so I was beating it by 2 stops.

We still plan on going back to the arboretum to create the several photographs that I have envisioned inside the wooded area but it will have to wait for another day!