Love and Light

One thing I REALLY enjoy about teaching classes in this environment is how each class I teach, while the subject is the same from day to day, the classes rarely go the same.  This weekend was no exception.  Friday’s class seemed to take more of a lighting direction, but Saturday’s class focused on posing and working with the couple’s interactions with each other.  We did a ton of posing work, and focused on how to change minor details to refine the pose and to try to make it the best it could be.

We started with some warm up kinds of poses to get our models, Kayla & Kyle, warmed up to being in front of the group and to get our creativity flowing.

Then we brought it to a more hip/contemporary kind of look.

While we were at it, a couple of individual portraits of Kayla & Kyle.  :)

And of course we worked with some off camera flash too.  This one was shot with an Alienbee 1600 and 24 inch Westcott Apollo Softbox.

We had a great time in Tulsa this year at the MPIX.com Meetup, and can’t wait for an even bigger and better event in 2012!

This morning’s session was a ton of fun!  The wind gave us some trouble but we had a variety of outdoor lighting situations and they changed quickly, so it gave us a chance to shoot a lot with both reflected “natural” light and then with off camera flash.  As promised in class, here’s a no flash version and with flash version of a very similar shot at the same location.

The first is shot with no flash, with a lot of sun coming from behind our couple, Lindsey and John.

The second shot shown here, was shot with an Alienbee 1600 and a Westcott Softbox with the diffuser panel removed.

This is a wonderful example of having a variety of methods to light your subjects in almost any lighting situation.  Versatility as a shooter gives you so many options to create images you’ll be thrilled with and the couple will love.  Of course, my favorite of the two is the one lit with flash.  I love the dramatic sky and how the light source and lines lead right to Lindsey and John.

This last image is one of my favorites from the session.  It’s lit completely with reflected light from the sun and a large brick building that was left of the camera.  In post I added a little bit of grunge texture to go with the texture of the brush in front of them.  I love the light feel of this one, and their smiles are amazing!

Headed off to dinner now!  Check back for more images from the weekend! 

Heather and I are in Tulsa for the weekend for the annual MPIX.com T-Town Shootout. Today is registration day, and so far we’ve seen so many of our friends and family in the photography business.  We’re looking forward to the weekend, the teaching, the learning, catching up with old friends and meeting many new ones!

We’re off to get registered!  We’ll try to keep things updated here with images and words from the weekend!