Lifestyle portraits and teenagers

Some of my favourite people to work with are teenagers. There curiosity and willingness to try things make photographing them a delight. The images in this post are from a recent lifestyle portrait session that I did at Kates Park in North Vancouver. It was close to sunset, maybe an hour before, when these images where taken. Although they were done at about the same time and same place, two very different techniques were used to capture the images.

The first image was taken in direct sunlight. The subject was turned so that her back was facing the sun. When photographing a portrait in direct sunlight, I work at having the subject between the sun and the camera. This technique gives the beautiful rim light that I have in this portrait and allows me to control the light on the face.

When taking this portrait, the sun was low enough to cause flair in my image that I did not like. to correct this, I moved to be at a slight angle to the sun - correcting the flair problem.  A reflector was used to control the light back into the face.

Post production was in Lightroom. To soften the entire image, I used the clarity slider and then added some grain. I also wanted to have a lighter feel to the image so I used the split toning feature to create a look that appeared to be more of a morning light. I have also made some skin tonality adjustments using the luminosity sliders. finally a light vignette was added. I liked the effect so I made it into a Lightroom preset.

The second image was taken about 15 minutes later at a different area of the park. I am facing North East here and the sun is low in the sky - on the other side of the park. As a result, there is sun shining across the water lighting the boat and the opposite shoreline, but the beach we are on is being shaded by the trees.

To get this image, I set my exposure for the background. I wanted to show off the beauty of the setting so I needed to insure that it did not disappear. If I had exposed for the subject, the background would have become very overexposed. By exposing for the background, I put the subject in dark. This gives me the advantage of being able to control the exposure on the subject using Flash. I put two 580 EX 11 flashes in a 40" umbrella and balanced the exposure on the subject to the exposure on the background. The final exposure was F 5.0 @ 1/200th,  ISO 200 on a Canon 7D. Lens 10 - 22mm set at 21mm.

Final touches in Lightroom were minor skin tone adjustments and a vignette.

This session was a lot of fun and I know the client had a great time as well. We had a lot of time to try some different things and to just play, and the result were well worth it.

Lake time

It's lake time once again, and the first thing that gets packed into the truck is the camera gear. It's a force of habit I know, but I don't think I have ever gone to the cabin, our any place else, without it. It's a part of me and in many ways it is who I am. It's been this way for years now and it is likely to never change.

I always enjoy going to the cabin and one of my favourite things about it is that there is always something to tinker with. Something always needs fixing. This trip had a couple of minor issues, the door on the dishwasher was out of kilter and some general clean up of the property, but there was one larger issue to take care of. The effluent pump was not working!

When we arrived, my brother in law had already determined that the problem was not actually the pump but a problem with the power supply. We opened up the electrical box and discovered a corroded mess. All the wires had corroded to the point where the wire needed to be replaced all the way from the box in the cabin out to the sump area where the pump is.

As is the case at the lake, a major problem such as this requires a beer and consultations with the rest of the cabin community. As we were approaching the need for a second beer, our close friend Kent say "hang on, I think I get some BX cable at the cabin". 10 minutes later he's back with his son in law who happens to be an electrician, and guess what, he's got his tools with him and all the parts we need to do the job. An hour later, the pump is back in business and everyone is one again able to do their business.

Our electrician friend was a true professional. In his mind, there was no question that he would have his tools with him. They are what he does and they are a part of him. He also wanted to help. You could see that being able to use his craft gave him joy. What a wonderful gift.

As photographers, we need to see our cameras in the same light. They are the tools that we use to do our craft. I could not come up to the cabin and be comfortable without my camera. The interesting thing is that every time I come up, I have occasion to use it. And every time I come home with some different images.

Photographing in a Alley

When I am photographing a portrait, I often find the background I want to use, but the lighting on the subject just isn't there. In situations like these, the flashes need to come out.

The photograph attached to this post was taken in a very narrow lane in downtown Vancouver. Sometimes, if you work near the end of the lane, you can get directional lighting, however, this stretch of wall was in the middle of the lane, giving only top down lighting t work with. The existing lighting would have created very dark shadows under the eyes resulting in a generally unpleasing image. A quick solution would have been to pull out a reflector and shine some light back into the shadowed areas, however, this would have also light up under the nose and chin, a look that I am not particularly fond of. I felt that a better solution was to pull out the flashes.

My primary light source was 2-580EX2 flashes placed inside of a 2x2 Apollo soft box. The light source was placed to camera left. The exposure was set to balance the ambient light. Balancing the flash with the ambient minimized shadows on the wall and careful placement of the light and subject all but eliminated them. The net result was a portrait that looked natural yet still light the mask of the face.

This image was taken with a Canon D6, 70-200 IS f2.8 lens at 200mm, f 5, ISO 800, shutter speed 1/60. The image was finished in Lightroom with a vignette.