Saturday was the busiest of the two days as I had two sessions lined up. One was to set up and test the lighting for an upcoming yoga instructor shoot and the other was to update a head shot/portrait for a friend of mine.
First up was the yoga instructor shoot set up and lighting test. It was pretty straight forward - shoot the subjects on white seamless and make the background pure white.
Currently I am only shooting with off-camera flash (all Canon 580EX IIs) so perhaps that makes it a bit more challenging, I'm not really sure. Regardless, it took probably about an hour to pack up, transport, unpack and set up all the gear. About twenty minutes of testing and I was making pictures. For the yoga instructor shoot we want pure white backgrounds but we still want shadow, some "connection to the Earth". I got it.
I learned quite a few things in the process, which was the whole idea. When it's time for the main shoot, just over a week from now, I will have all my settings ready to go.
The next session was to update a portrait for my friend Cariann. And, just like a lot of people, she does not really like getting her picture taken. My job as the photographer is to make her feel at ease and give her results she completely loves. For portraits I find that there is nothing better and more natural than beautifully diffused daylight. Luckily I have access to this great wall of glass blocks that does an amazing job of spreading and softening the natural light. The setup for her portrait was pretty easy. Use the wall of glass bricks as a background and place a large, round reflector in front of her to redirect some of that gorgeous light on her. I used a grey/white card to meter the exposure and set the white balance and twenty minutes later we had a wonderful portrait.
With the portrait out of the way we switched to more of a studio look for a bit of fun. Here is my favourite shot from that set up.
Purple is such a vibrant colour and Cariann was a wonderful, cooperative model. A great end to a busy day.
On Sunday I was supposed to do an indoor decor shoot but that got cancelled at the last minute, which I think worked out for the best. It gave me more time for post production work, which ended up consuming the better part of the day.
But before Sunday came to a close Jen and I got together to make a fun birthday picture for a wonderful friend of ours who has moved away from us. Here is the result.
There was a quick bit of post production work on that shot before sending it off to our friend. And, very quickly after that I found myself heading for bed.
It was an awesome weekend! Lots of picture making and even better I was able to give my new Canon 5D Mark II a really good workout. Oh, it performed flawlessly by the way.
Keep shooting.
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