Shooting at Studio GTC with Misty

Misty - Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 2.8L IS - Gridded softbox above,
Parabolic 60' Umbrella left, and Gridded spot right.

A really cool thing about the photography program at Gwinnett Tech is that we have a huge studio available to shoot in.  How huge is it?  Well on one side we are building a pretty elaborate holiday set for our Holiday Portraits (Link up soon), but it's still big enough to shoot in the others side.

Ian and I took advantage of the studio today in our late lab.  Setting up some of my Norman lights we modified it with some of my favorite modifiers included a gridded beauty dish, a gridded soft-box, and a gridded spot light.

Interested in learning more? Check out this cool blog that explains the affects of modifiers on a light.  This is a great post also.

Of course with awesome light, you need awesome models.  Aglae (The MOTM) modeled for Ian, where aspiring model and pretty cool chica Misty modeled for me.  Check out some of the shots below, and a quick caption of how they were taken.

It was really nice to wipe the dust of an old favorite lens of mine, the Canon 85 1.2L II.  It's been a while since I've used it (it's mainly a wedding lens) and it reminded me of the old magic.

Advance Portraiture | High Key

Here is another example taken from the High-Key portraiture assignment for our Advance Portraiture class.  More than likely I'm not going to use this image as my final print, but it was nice creating a glowing high key shot that would print really nicely on Epson velvet fine art.

Advance Portraiture Assignment 2 | Childrens Portrait

I had a little bit of a late start to the children portrait assignment for advance portraiture.  You would think my daughter Aislynn would be the ideal candidate to shoot, but like a good classmate I let Aisy bear model for another classmate.  On the same day my little child model wasn't available, and wouldn't be available until exactly a week later.  Boy it was worth the wait though. 

World, I would like to introduce to you Carson.  The only little one that nearly matches Aisy on the cuteness and awesomeness scale. Lets let the photos tell you about him, but by all means when a little boy comes in dressed as a shark, yeah you're gonna get great photos.

And of course since he looks like a kid also, here's Snyder

20 minutes with Christina Lee

 
I love Lee, she's hilarious.  For those who don't know her, Lee is the residential artist and all around sassy awesome in our photography upper quarter class.  She is pretty much known throughout the school, and everyone gets along with her.  I also love the fact that she told me she disliked me once, before she knew me.  Cause I was that dude who had all the camera stuff, and I acted all snooty and high and mighty.  Of course that was for like a day, or maybe 10...than she gave me a second chance :).

Well Lee dropped by a few days ago to borrow a light, and we all hung out at my place.  Ian, Sterling, Tiff, Lee, and I talked movies, mayhem, and more.  Like all hippie fest (or how it seems to be) a Ukulele comes out and Lee starts jamming.  After the initial wail of Tiff screaming bloody murder about anyone who can play the Ukulele better than her (which is anyone who plays a guitar at all), I decided to take some photos of Lee.

And thus the title!  20 minutes of shooting Christina Lee.

For this shoot I broke out a Paul C Buff Parabolic Light Modifier that my friend Jamie let me borrow.  It's this uber huge umbrella light modifier that reflects a huge amount of light into a tinier than normal area.  Attached to my Norman ML600r, it was popping a crazy amount of light out and even provided a unique background.  Check out the photos!

Advance Portraiture Assignment 1 | Pet Portraits

The first assignment for our Advance Portraiture class at school was pet portraiture.  While at first I was very much interested in taking a picture of Copper, my amazingly awesome cat, I ended up having this cool opportunity to photograph a sugar glider.  My friend Maryn has the cutest little sugar glider named Stella Luna (after some popular children book about a bat), and Stella was the perfect little model.  We ended up shooting for about 45 minutes and Stella posed for some super adorable photos.  It was really a unique experience shooting something so small and so delicate.  Here are some photographs.  Read after the jump about what I was going for, how I lit these shots, and what equipment was used.