Mentor style shot

This is the style I love.

Gary Thomas taught me everything I knew... Check him out at www.gthomasphoto.com

Overpowering the sun.

This was a concept that took me for freaking ever to grasp. But what it really means is you kill the ambient, shoot a flash at really high wattage, and shoot a small fstop. Make sense? Okay, no, but what it really is is to darken the overall scene. Here is a good example, if I had shot this with a speed light, there would be a ton of white in the background from the sun, well not that I was able to shoot at f10, the sky was darker, now Kelli here was black. But with a alienbees ABR800 from the left side, I was able to fill her in giving a harsh contrast between the subject and background.

So basically you are killing the abient and filling in with flash, one of my favorite styles.

God's light

First of all, this is not a hey let me shove my views down your throat session. The reason I named this blog to what I did is because of the lighting, every time I see a picture of God or a god in general you always see this peaking out light.

How I got this photo is a funny story. I am sure you guys know, I still do not have an LCD screen on my camera. Which sucks. However, I was on a set with a girl who paid me to help her develop her portfolio and learn how to pose and get more expressions. I usually will demostrate to, I am a visual learner myself. We had agreed on a country girl look with ambient sunlight, give her that dreamy look and some sunset bikini work. before the shoot, she had mentioned she was a cheerleader and wanted to show off her body.

So after getting all the details set in stone, we meet up at 7 P.M. and get into her first outfit which was simple we shot for about 45 minutes in some cowgirl looking stuff, including a white dress. About 8 or so we started walking back to her car and I noticed the clouds so the colors started coming out, and full sunset was at 835 so we got a crackin on the shooting. Her first swimsuit was a white one, we shot about 30 shots in that, then switched to a hot pink swimsuit. While she was changing I noticed the beams of light coming through and wanted to get a shot, which I did. I was not sure how it would come out because of the LCD thing. When I got home I got this.

The reason I was not sure what I would get is because your camera and eye are 2 totally seperate things, your eyes can see like 65 bazillion colors and your camera can only see 64k or so, when shooting in RAW, when shooting in JPEG 2,500 or so. Your lens, depending on which one, at most 6 stops of light, your eyes, 14 stops of light. Now how cool would it be to make lenses out of eyeballs? I think I am onto something here, instead of pixels reading the info there will be rods and cones. Just because my eye saw this, does not mean my camera did, and I just so happened to get it.

You ever wonder why your eyes can see the pinks in sunsets? But when you perfectly expose a sunset it is white? Listen to you eyes, and underexpose by 2 to 4 stops for sunsets.

Behind the scenes... a video I learned from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGfiAbUeLhw

Not the norm

Somtimes I just like black and white images with pure ambient light.

All you need is love! (and sunlight)

So lately if any of you have been stalking me on Facebook, you know I try 100s of lighting styles. One I have been doing a lot lately is pure sunlight. I never really mastered it when I started it, I got thrown into off camera lighting and making images with drama, strobist style. Still my favorite style though. To mme there was no point in using only ambient lighting. And for the record, I only use the sun as ambient lighting, I do not like continuous lighting or gravy training others flashes. Sunlight and only sunlight can be a good thing sometimes.

Sunlight pointed to the back give a girl a dreay look because you have to overexpose the background giving them a dreamy look, combine that with a shallow depth of field, they will love it. Anyways, the reason I am trying to do more of this is there are a lot of pros who use it, and their work looks amazing. I love the flare in it to, just gives it a well dreamy look. This image is SOOC, for all the cool kids who know. For the non photographers means straight out of camera. I think I like it a lot. I am going to have to do some more of this kind of work. And all you will need is sunlight and the girls will love it!

This model was awesome she was a blast to work with.

Dreamy look

I have been looking to do some dreamy looks with ambient light, women love it. Just saying.

What do you guys think?