The Alley Jump
So this is the reason why my foot has been hurting for a week.
Warm Sand Between Your Toes
I’m imagining that I’m sitting on the beach, squishing the warm sand in between my toes. Mmmmmmmm.
Boulder Senior Portrait Photographer - Steve Z Photography
Spring has finally sprung here in Boulder and I’m enjoying riding my bike to the studio in shorts for a change. Spring also means that it’s graduation time, and time to shoot some senior portrait photography. Brett just graduated from CU and was looking for just a headshot for his graduation announcements. We met at a Club Entrepreneur meeting on campus back in the winter. I have another senior portrait session on tap for this weekend down in Denver, so I’ll be looking for some new locations to shoot at down in the metro area this week. Enjoy the nice weather and Happy Tuesday!
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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Denver Engagement Portrait Photography Shoot with Shauna and Bryan
With all this winter weather still going on in Colorado it has been tough to get my engagement photo shoots going. Last weekend was sunny and warm and I was able to squeeze in a shoot before the next snowstorm rolled in.
I’ve been getting a little bored of shooting in Boulder so I offered to drive down to Denver to meet up with Shauna and Bryan. I’ve been wanting to do a shoot in the area around the Denver Public Library and Civic Center Park. There is a huge variety of cool architecture and sculptures in the area. I’m sure I could shoot there many times without running out of new ideas. I will not take pictures of anyone riding the giant cow sculptures unless they pay me extra. Sometimes you just have to draw the line.
The buildings near and around the library and art museum are pretty over the top and crazy. Which of course is perfect for me! I’m sure I’m committing some kind of compositional sin by having the pointy art museum building spiking Bryan through the top of the head, but I don’t care. The building was cool because it was shiny, and I used it as a giant reflector for my strobe.
One of the reasons that I get bored shooting in Boulder is that there is a dearth of cool architecture. There is mostly a whole lot of boring brick buildings. Ironically, I traveled all the way to Denver to shoot in front of a brick building! But I will say that I thought this one was particularly cool, as the brick was old and irregular.
So overall it was a pretty fun day. Shauna and Bryan are a super rad couple, and quite an attractive pair. Double bonus! Portfolio couple!
These guys are both pharmacists by day. They brought a whole pile of pills which made the shoot really fun. We took uppers for the dancing shots, downers for the fashion shots, and ecstasy for the romantic shots. Well, OK, not really, but I’m trying to add more humor to this blog!
Well that’s all for now. Hopefully spring will be here to stay and I will be back in the swing of warm springtime shooting. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you next week!
Caption Contest for the Steve Z beating Timmy O’neill Photo
OK lets see how many people I can get to post something. Timmy O’neill is back in town for a spell, and called me up to go on a ride this weekend. We heading up to Betasso for my first loop of the year. Timmy always likes to go hard, all the time. He’s the guy who is most likely to kick your ass with a blown out cheap bike that doesn’t shift, has oil leaking from both fork legs, flat pedals, and a mountaineering helmet. At the end of our loop I set the camera on the table and popped the timer. No planning, one take, and this photo is what we got. I tried to think of a funny caption, but it’s Monday morning and I’m feeling sluggish. Who’s feeling witty? Timmy? Ryan?
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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Florida Beach Engagement Photos with Rebecca and Todd
I sure shot a lot of photos when I was down in Florida. I’m still catching up, working late into the weekend. I finally finished up Rebecca and Todd’s engagement photos. Sorry that it took so long, guys!
This wedding is going to be a BLAST! This guys are really good people, easy to be around with great senses of humor. My perfect clients! What is going to be even better is that the wedding is going to be at the famous Breakers Hotel, in Palm Beach, Florida. This place is crazy over the top. The hotel coordinator asked Rebecca’s mom why she wasn’t using their preferred photographer, who is Martha Stewart’s photographer. Susan told him that she found someone better and was flying him in from Colorado. Sweet. You can’t get better advertising then that. I’m going to be rollin’ into the hood of Donald Trump and showing them what’s up!
We experienced some bizarre weather in St. Petersburg on this day. We originally were going to shoot at the Fort Desoto Beach. We were crossing the last bridge down to the island when we encountered a huge wall of marine sea fog! Now if this was California then we wouldn’t have been surprised, but I hadn’t seen anything like it in Florida before.
So we did an about face, and headed back to downtown St. Pete to find a location that wasn’t shrouded in a big cloud. We found a nice park near The Pier in downtown St. Pete that had, sand, grass, and some super nice palm trees. In the end I think we found an even nicer location, that had a lot of diverse options. See? Everything does happen for a reason! I’m looking forward to another little Florida getaway next December, see everyone then!
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.
Engagement Beach Photo Shoot at Honeymoon Island State Park with Amber and Caleb
This shoot was an unexpected bonus for me on my trip to Tampa. Amber accompanied Eugenia to the sunset swimsuit shoot to lend moral support as well as to make sure that I wasn’t a creeper. As it turns out, she is engaged to be married this year and was looking for some engagement photos with her fiancé. Fortunately she decided that I was more entertaining than creepy, and asked if I could shoot photos of her and Caleb. The catch was that there was only a one day window of opportunity before Caleb rolled out of town back to the military base after visiting for the holidays. The timing was perfectamundo, and we all met up next day back at Honeymoon Island for some portrait fun.
More images after the page break …