Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Mexican Fashion Photography in Boulder
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Welcome to Part 2 of the Crystal Fashion Shoot. Chronicalogically this was Part 1, but never mind that! Crystal needed a photo to run in her local La Junta newspaper in an ad for Cinco de Mayo festivities. I could have taken one good shoot and have been finished . . . but that wouldn’t be my style. I have a way of going overboard when it comes to getting “1 more good shot . . . ” Things are busy busy these days, so I’m not going to jabber on, and I’ll leave you to the gallery.
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Model Fashion Photos in Downtown Boulder Colorado with Crystal
I have been on the lookout for interesting locations to shoot in Boulder. I keep whining that Boulder doesn’t have much interesting architecture to shoot in front of. It seems that everywhere you turn there are more brick buildings. I was determined to find somewhere urban and edgy to shoot downtown. In the end, I would up being somewhat foiled by the monotany, and I shot in front of bricks. Again. Oh well, I brought out the Strobist gear to add some hard light to give an edgy feel to some of the shots.
I was able to find a narrow alley that looked somewhat city-like. The whole scene was pretty funny, as we were getting quite a few inquizative looks from Boulderites. People are used to seeing engagement and wedding shoots, but this fashion stuff is pretty radical for 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon in The Republic.
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Fashion Show Photos: Charity Event to raise awareness for breast self exams
Last week The T-Bar presented “Touch These!!!”; a breast self examination awareness fashion show at Bacaro. The $5 collected at the door went to the Susan G. Komen foundation. Some local kids were out there strutin’ their stuff in the latest lingerie from The T-Bar.
I showed up with some of the local crew to support the event and shoot some photos. I was determined to try and get some cool shots, despite the normal challenges one encounters when trying to shoot local fashion shows. Things like marginally aesthetic backgrounds, tight spaces, and 360 degree spectators usually make shooting conditions challenging.
I decided that my best bet was to round up as many strobes and Pocket Wizards as possible and blow the place up with light, Strobist style! I was running 5 flashes mounted all the way around. Sometimes the rear lights were a bit hot depending on where the models were in their walk, but I was going for an over the top, glam rock look.
I did cheat a little bit in Photoshop. There were some tables and junk through this entryway that I painted out. Next time I’ll probably try turning the rear lights down a bit, but overall I’m pretty happy with the way that they came out.
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Steve Z in the Studio
Here is Part 2 of the Steve and Bobbie studio experience. If you missed the story, Part 1 is HERE. I’m going to keep this one short since it’s midnight, I’m off to Europe in the morning, and I haven’t started packing. Stay tuned for European adventures!!!
Swimsuit Fashion Shots with Brittney
In the past I haven’t taken my fashion photography very seriously. I’ve done a few shoots here and there to practice my lighting, and to have a little fun. Then I did those swimsuit shoots when I was down in Florida. Once again, those were mostly to practice in some different shooting conditions than I normally get in Colorado. Now it seems that I’m getting some recognition for my efforts, and I’ve started to get paying requests for my work.
I thought that the only purpose has been to improve my portraiture, and maybe work on some fashion bridal type shoots. I’ve been a bit reluctant to invest too much time into an area of the business where there are tons of guys who will do this stuff for free.
Personally, I find that shooting and editing these photos are no fun at all. No, I won’t do any more. Stop twisting my arm. Ow, ow, ow, quit it!
Welllllllllllll . . . mmmmm . . . OK. Maybe just one or two more bikini shoots. But only because I need the money. I don’t enjoy it at all. Wherefore art thou cubicle?
There are a few more after the break . . .
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Superstar: Past or Present?
Bobby and Stevie’s Excellent Studio Adventure
One of my photographer friends who I share my studio space with is Bobbie Turner. He has a picture of himself attached to the bottom of his email signature that I really didn’t like. Since I’m not one to hold back, I told him that he needed a new one! And actually I needed some of myself as well, so we planned a day in the studio to play with lighting and to each get pictures of ourselves for our own promotion.
You can check out Bobbie’s website and blog by clicking the links.
Bobbie’s cool, he used to race BMX back in the 80’s like me hee-ha!!! As a result, he has hit his head many times just like me.
We couldn’t be serious for too long in there. We were coming up with wild lighting scenarios and busting out some moves. Listing to Kid Rock does these things to you, honest. Look for the sequel to this post with my inverted aerial maneuvers coming soon!
Swimsuit Model Shoot - Yeah, It’s a Tough Job
No, I’m not back in some warm tropical locale, I’m just pretending. I still have a lot of the photos that I took on my trip to Florida yet to edit. I’m intentionally spacing out the warm weather photos. Like Homer would say, “Mmmmmmm, bikinis.” Or something like that.
I did this shoot right after watching an informational seminar on shooting in bright sunlight. Bright sun can be challenging to shoot in because it is going to create blown out highlights and dark shadows. A camera cannot record the full range of light and shadows that we can see with our eyes. So the trick to shooting out in bright sun is to plan where you want the light to blow out in the photos.
Well, yeah, you could always go under a tree in the shade somewhere. But I’ve found that pure shade can lead to photos that are kindof boring and flat.
I found that bright sun can really produce dramatic effects in your photos. I find these images intriguing where I intentionally blew out parts of the photos. Some of the other photos that I took where everything was exposed properly seem boring in comparison!
When you see Sports Illustrated type model shoots, the images are shot at the perfect light time of day, or there is a gaggle of assistants holding light blocking screens or auxiliary lighting. Sure I could have done that here, but when you are shooting weddings you don’t always get the chance to shoot when the light is perfect. A great photographer can produce solid images in any kind of light.
Another thing that I learned in some of the seminars is that I really liked a lot of the images that were blatantly (to me) manipulated in Photoshop. So I went a little crazier than normal on these photos with the color tweaking. But no, I didn’t Photoshop her eyes to be different colors in the above photo. That’s just how the picture came out. We’ll see how I like my editing style three months from now. In the past when I’ve picked a strong editing style I’ve found myself changing my mind on what I like later.
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Fashion Model Shoot at Fort Desoto Beach: Does it get this cold in Florida?
I’m still catching up with all of the photo shoots that I did while I was down in Florida. I’m almost through with 2007, can I get a ‘Hell Yeah’? These pictures were taken at Fort Desoto which is at the very southern tip of the St. Petersburg peninsula. This day was so damn cold. It was 45 degrees and windy. Rachel was so cold that she had to go back to the car for a while and warm up. I was OK with it, because goosebumps aren’t fun to Photoshop! Luckily there were these cool old cement pieces of fort left poking out of the sand. We did a lot of shooting hiding behind them, using them as wind breaks.
I found one thing out for sure when I was in Tampa, there is not a shortage of girls who have aspiring modeling careers. A single Craigslist ad resulted in over a dozen responses. So it worked out really well for me. I was on ‘vacation’, I had free time, and my usual strong desire to practice practice practice. And what better way to practice than taking pictures of beautiful women? I knew you’d see my point.
The purpose of today’s exercise was to see what kind of images I could get without any auxiliary lighting or reflectors. My last Strobist flash style sunset beach shoot that I did gave me some great results. I was confident that I could do the exact same thing again, but how fun would that be? I’m only really enjoying myself when I’m risking failure. Is that really true? I don’t know, I’m just making stuff up to fill in the gaps between these photos. Anyway, I wanted to work on my shooting in pure bright sunlight.
My main goal was to create some arty black and white images, as opposed to another Sports Illustrated style swimsuit shoot. I took a lot of weird pictures. I’m not sure if I like them yet. I will post them later after I take care of more important things first. In the meantime, Rachel was anxious for some pictures for booking some gigs, so I edited these ones, which are a bit more conventional. They are still pretty contrast-y though. I probably will use a reflector next time.
Florida Swimsuit Fashion Photography Shoot
A funny thing about being a photographer is that when you go on vacation it’s easy to just keep on working. New scenery is inspiring, and leads to more and more shooting. Usually there is not enough time to edit all the photos that you take while traveling, so when you get home you have even more work than when you left! But when you have the opportunity to take pictures like the one above … a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!
I am doing a beach engagement shoot while I’m here for a very big wedding that I booked at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach Florida in December 2008. Being from Colorado, I’ve never actually shot on the beach before, so I wanted to do a practice run before this important client. So I found Eugenia to help me out with some modeling. She’s never actually done any modeling before, so she should be happy with the way these came out!
Eugenia brought a friend along with her to the shoot at Honeymoon Island Beach. As it turns out, her friend Amber is in need of some engagement pictures, but her fiance is in the military and was only going to be in town for 2 more days. Luckily I was free, and was able to shoot them the next day for some extra vacation spending money! Sweet!
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Fashion Photography - Poise October Meetup at Space Gallery in Denver
Last week I attended my second Poise Meetup for models and photographers. It was held at the Denver Space Gallery. Here are some of the photos.
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Fashion Shoot in the Rain (Never give up!)
I had been planning a portfolio shoot with Crystal for over a week. By Saturday it was pretty clear that Sunday was going to be a washout. But Crystal has a busy schedule, and we weren’t sure when we were going to be able to shoot again. So we persevered, and despite almost running out of daylight, intrusions on our desired locations, and other setbacks, we made it happen. Lingerie photos in the 40 degree rain! Despite that it was getting dark and she has the tendency to ‘get cold easily’, we came out with some fun stuff.
There are more images after the break . . .
OK, I’m done milking it now
I’ve been quite busy with the major site overhaul. So I’m still milking the shots from the Poise shoot. But this will be it, I promise. I have been keeping up with the shooting lately. It has been all portraits all the time, with an upcoming wedding this Saturday. I think it’s going to be a ripper!
This is Tnisha and TJ, they are engaged for real, not just model-pretend engaged. They are fun to shoot with. I hope to shoot their wedding in 2009. I told them I’ll still give them the hookup on pricing, since I’ll probably be out of their price range by then. ;>) I’m kidding. Sortof. Does that count as manifesting my future?
It makes me laugh that my job is taking pictures of people making out.
. . . and here are some more of Kimberly.
Whoa. Those eyes.
I’ve had a really good time shooting with the 85mm 1.8 lens. I had to go out an buy one. I’m such a gear weenie.
The Beauty Queen
My latest photos to post from the Poise fashion event are of Morgan Weaver. She is currently Miss Jefferson County!
Daily Photo - The Poise Meetup
I got a last minute invite to a fashion model/photographer event down in Denver this week. The group is called Poise, and they organize by using Meetup.com. My first reaction was, “Oh no, yet another online networking thing that I have to create a profile for…” But this event turned out to be really fun and productive, so I think I will be improving my Meetup profile soon.
So the event was very fashion modeling oriented. I had my own agenda though, because I was borrowing an 85mm 1.8 lens that I wanted to test. So while most of the photographers were shooting model-ish poses in a pack under the hot lights; I was working on my portrait shots on a one on one basis. I had a good time, good some good shots, learned some tricks, and made some contacts.
So over the next couple days I will be posting my favorite shots. First up we have the lovely Kimberly. I love this photo.