Anniversary Take 2

I decided to shoot their anniversary photo from two different locations. This was actually the first I choose. This was taken from the side of their house. I choose this spot because of the continuos color and for the texture of the stucco. I thought it would provide an interesting backdrop for them.

I have tried this technique once before and I LOVED the results. Although, I had only one person in the shot, this time I was dealing with two. I pressed forward and decided to see what we could get, if anything.

I set up one 430ex speedlight right above my camera. I shot this speedlight through an umbrella to get a nice, soft fill light. Then I knocked the exposure of this light down 2 stops. I didn't want this to be the main light - just some fill. I then set up another 430ex camera left to shoot through a snoot. (My own version made from a cardboard box) This would help funnel the light and keep it contained so it only hit their faces and not fill in the rest of the photo.

With the fill light 2 stops underexposed and the key light right on the money, I was taking photos. That's when they started to act natural now that I had things set up. I choose this photo because of the bit of attitude Debbie is showing off. There were some other photos with them laughing and smiling, but this one stood out from the others.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. I'll try to answer them best I can.

The Anniversary

It was my sister's anniversary this year with her husband. She asked me to babysit. Okay, she didn't ask, we volunteered. But it was still fun. We got to watch 4 kids and eat pizza. Somehow, we survived.

Since I was going to be coming over, Debbie did ask if I wouldn't mind taking some photos of her and Mike. They haven't had a photo taken of just them for quite awhile. I agreed and thought I would put to use some of the techniques I have learned lately.

For this particular photo, I used two lights. One was a 430ex speedlight camera left shot through an umbrella to soften the light. The other light was the sun. The sun was setting and creating a nice warm light that was just hitting the their hair. I did put a CTO gel on the speedlight to help match the warmth of the sun. The sun put a nice rim light on them while the speedlight filled in from the left.

This was captured during their fun banter between each other. There was a lot of playing around with these two so we have quite a few photos with bunny ears and open-mouth laughing. I did capture this photo and I choose this one to highlight because of the uniqueness to this photo. I like it because the anticipation of the kiss - just enough separation between them to create a highlight and their expressions show how much they care for one another. There is so much emotion spilling from this photo.

Happy Anniversary Debbie & Mike. I hope you enjoy the photos. The bill is in the mail. ;)

The Model

Before I get too far into this blog, I do need to pay tribute to my lovely model. She has been very supportive of this hobby and continues to help me out learning new things. I am sure she gets sick of me trying to pose her, putting her in weird stances, that never seem to look good. But she stands strong and puts up with my lack of posing skills (something I'm trying to learn how to do at the moment). It's when she throws my posing ideas out the window and takes things her own way with her natural posing that the photos really start to look good.

We took this photo in my kitchen one night playing with her new coat. We wanted to get a photo with some edge along with an alluring look. I think she did awesome at that. I really enjoy the catch light I was able to capture in her right eye. We shot this with an alienbees 800 softboxed camera right and a gridded alienbees 400 to provide the hairlight. Shot at 85mm, ISO 160, 1/30 sec, f/9.