Summer Shine

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to shoot with two really cool girls and a nice location. I'm of course talking about Nica and Zoe. It's always nice to have a bit of creative help on a shoot as these two girls do plenty of artistic activities. The location was a nice Arizona themed house located centrally. A nice feature of the house was large room clad in nice furniture, art, and a piano. I brought both my Photoflex Starflash 650w units with me, as I wasn't sure what to expect regarding natural light in the house. Like a true noob, I totally forgot both my reflective umbrellas while packing my gear. Not to be undone by my mistake, I took it in stride, and strived to work around it. After all, I still had 6 inch reflectors to work with on the strobes. Knowing my light source would be a bit more directional and tightly grouped. I positioned the strobes a decent distance from the subjects at low power levels. In some shots, I pointed the strobes straight up to bounce the light off the ceiling. We went through a few different sets of photos in the large room with a somewhat vintage feel to them. The addition of an old rotary telephoto and custom pottery was a nice touch. Nica is a musician, so naturally we did a set inside with her playing the piano. Zoe provided some background dancing and away we went shooting. After working inside, we took a break outside and decided it would be cool to do a few shots outside to mix it up. Being outside we now had quite a bit of natural light to work with. After an outfit change, our first set involved the girls under the patio, Nica on a tricycle and Zoe on a small chair. The next photos to be shot were individual portraits. I wanted to go a bit more subtle and natural with their individual shots so I kept the flash power very low. A long time ago, I once read that using flash in photography isn't about adding light everywhere, it's about controlling your shadows. I try to follow this advice and every time I use my strobes, I become more comfortable in my ability to use artificial light. This also includes blending natural and artificial light together to get that desired look. Overall, it was a really fun shoot and I look forward to working with them again. Thanks for stopping by.

Zoe and Nica

Zoe

Clear winner

1/60s,  F/8.0,  ISO 100

Nica

Jamming

Personal fave

Fin