PBPhoto: March 2011

Sweet 16

I had the privilege of photographing an awesome sweet 16 birthday party recently. What an amazing family! Thanks so much for involving me in the celebration.

So we were in the youth zone of our church. It is a very typical multipurpose room. For ambient light we have the ubiquitous fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling. Great if you like dim green light. Not exactly my favorite. So my approach was to create a zone of light that covers the room using two monolights in opposing corners of the room aimed at the ceiling but angled toward the center of the room. So I'm using the white tiles as huge light modifiers. I also put my Vivitar 285HV onto a stand to use for additional fill when needed. There was a corner of the room that was in the shadow of speakers and a big flat panel so I shot the Vivitar off the ceiling there when the subjects moved into that area.

In the above shots, I put my umbrella on the Vivitar. I moved the subject so that one of my monolights became the hair accent light. This was a very good setup as it gave me good coverage of the whole room.

This one was shot only using the monolights.

I think we did a great job of getting some quality light in here. This shot shows what a nice result we get by putting the subjects into a crosslight situation with one strobe in front and to camera right and the other behind and to camera left. You get a great keylight with a very nice hairlight.

I slowed the shutter speed down to capture some of the dancing action as well.

It was a great Sweet 16th Party. She is blessed to have such great parents and family.

Hope you all are blessed too.

0 comments Labels: backlight, black and white, multiple lights, portraits, rim light, Sweet16 | |

Another Amazing Weekend

We have been blessed lately with lots of fun on the weekends. This one was great. Two trips to Cocoa Village. One with great friends and the second just as a family. What a neat area. Architecturally interesting. Great colors. Cool art gallerys. Alleys. We even found a mountain. OK it was barely a hill but here in Central Florida you take what you can get. The shot above is in an art gallery. They have classes for kiddos which I think we are interested in.

We went in to the Porcher house. Oh I would love to have a house like that. Doesn't need to be that big but the style is great. This shot was on the back porch area that is mostly windows. The light is amazing. Would love to spend a few hours working shots in there. Too bad my current subject won't stand still for more than one shot.

The kiddos had so much fun at the park with friends.

Maggie gave me some flowers. Daddy's not a big flowers kind of guy but I'll take whatever that sweet thing gives me. So I arranged them on a bar at Murdock's restaurant. Great light and some rain gives an interesting shot.