Photography Weekend - Day 2

The morning began with a heavy downpour, so we all met at the IHOP in Bricktown to talk about the day's plans. To get out of the rain we chose to photograph inside an old building near downtown OKC that was being renovated. This provided us protection from the rain and wind, and best of all provided a gritty urban look to our pictures. Emily and I planned our shot before we started. She wanted something very urban and gritty, with a hard edged look. Because we were shooting in a dark building with very little available light, I brought my battery powered lights, stands and some light modifiers. Although we started out with more diffused lighting, after a bit we pulled the diffusion out and added a grid to the main light to give it more of a hard edge and control the spill. Mike was first up. While he has only been modeling a year, he has been involved in acting and drama and was very professional and easy to work with. He was very responsive to suggestions and really worked to get the look we were after. His wife and small daughter were with us and watched the entire session.

Next up we wanted to pull Emily into the scene. She had never worked with a male model before, so it took her a bit to get comfortable to the idea. She is very happily married and wasn't wild about being physically close to someone else, but Mike was the consumate professional and put both girls at easy. He always asked for permission before getting close or touching them, and he just took is time and was a complete gentleman at all times. This made it much easier for both female models to work with him and I was quite impressed with his demeanor.

Emily does not smoke but she wanted to add a cigarette to help complete the look. We were wanting an intimate, hard-edge look to the picture and I thought it turned out just like we were wanting.

Next Delila traded places with Emily and worked with Mike. When we first started I told her to give me a naughty look, like she was doing something she shouldn't be doing. This caused her to and Mike to laugh so I after that they were laughing between each picture. This made the shoot fun. Again Mike was very professional and both models took direction quite well. I think it would be tough getting that close to someone you had just started working with, but they all pulled it of quite well.

After our session we all had lunch in Bricktown and had a good time. I really look forward to working with everyone again, especially Mike. It is difficult to find male models who are comfortable in front of the camera and that are kind, respectful and courteous to the female models.

Photography Weekend - Day 1

Had a great time with weekend working with some new models, Mike from Tulsa and Delila from west Texas. This came about at the last minute when Mike emailed my daughter Emily about a shoot he was doing in Norman. We we invited to participate and met several other photographers and models.

Saturday night we met on the OU campus for a general outdoor session near the law library. The light was very nice at that time of day so I decided to just make use of what was available. I first worked with Mike and had him positioned in front of a bike rack with his face in the dappled lighting coming in through some trees. I used a large 7' reflector to camera left to bounce some fill light in and define his features. These first three pictures were done with just available light and one reflector. Notice the rim lighting from the reflector on Mike's right arm and shoulder, and the dappled light on his face, arm and body. The large bounce reflector helps provide definition to his form and seperation from the background.

This is basically the same lighting and a slightly different pose. The side lighting on his face gives the picture more of a dramatic feel.


And once more the same basic lighting with a different pose. I really like how the light is not fully across his face and how the bounce fill provides definition to his neck and shoulder.

Next we moved just a bit and worked with Delila in the same light. This time I used a gold reflector rather than white to bounce some gold light onto her right side.

This is the same lighting with a different pose. Delila was very easy to work with and seemed fairly experienced.

After this session we all decided to meet at 8 am Sunday morning for another session in Bricktown.

Downtown OKC Fashion Session

I really enjoy doing fashion photography. I never paid much attention to fashion in the past, but the more I do fashion photography the more fun it is. You won't see me in an Armani suit anytime soon, but I love taking new-edge fashion photographs and creating unique, interesting look.

For this shoot my daughter Emily called and said her best friend Melinda was in from out of state, and she wanted to see if we could do a quick fashion shoot. Melinda had never modeled before. I didn't have time for a full studio gig, so we decided to just meet for an hour in downtown OKC and see what we could put together. Emily and I have similar tastes and we wanted something edgy, gritty, and with dramatic lighting.

I brought only minimal equipment. We did this entire shoot with my D2x, 28-70 F2.8 lens, two SB-800's connected to Pocket Wizard receivers, a couple of Bogen light weight stands, my homemade snoots and a Westcott 42" folding umbrella. After meeting at Java Dave's coffee shop on 10th street near downtown, we drove a couple of blocks to a nearby alleyway, picked an old building and just started photographing. We had several comments from people passing by, but that didnt' slow us down. After shooting in stairwell, we moved to a building a block away that was being gutted and worked in there for a few minutes. In all the shoot took less than an hour, we had fun and got some pretty cool pictures.
Melinda was inexperience in how to work in front of the camera but with Emily's guidance she became more comfortable as the session progressed. A few more times and she will feel totally comfortable. Some people think modeling looks easy, but my experience is that like taking cool photographs, modeling is much harder than it looks.

To get the gritty, urban look I post processed in Nikon Capture NX and added the sepia toning, lots of contrast, and in fact added quite a bit of grain to make the pictures look more gritty and edgy. For the top two pictures I used a bare head flash and wanted the hard edge shadows as part of the composition. In the third pictureI used the Westcott umbrella to soften the light, and in the 4th picture I again used a bare flash, but dialed down to 1/64 power to add just a bit of fill to the picture.

Photographing a great big magnet

Magnets are cool. Especially when they help save lives. For this project in 1998 I needed to photograph a brand new, VERY expensive MRI scanner in Odessa, TX. Luckily I was able to shoot after hours when the magnet was not busy, and had some local radiology techs to stand in as models. The ambient light in the room was very low, so we decided to strobe the entire room. I chose to use my medium format Mamiya 645 for this photograph - before I was completely digital. Two Photogenic monolights were used to light the room, and one monolight with a yellow gel firing into the MRI from behind helped add drama and interest to the scene. It was interesting to walk past the MRI and almost have the lightstand and light jerked out of my hands by the magnet! My Sekonic light meter's LCD display would just disappear any time I got too close to the magnet, limiting my ability to meter the scene.

We pulled this shot off in about 45 minutes and only one role of 110 roll film. This image is still very current today and a best seller for me.