This summer I have been very busy with customer work, which is great – not complaining about that t all! But that means I haven’t had much time for personal work and I can’t post customer work on my web site until the embargo period ends. So last week I knew I had a Sunday morning free and I had a young lady I had seen on Facebook that I really wanted to photograph. She had a young, refreshing look with a bright smile, but the photos on her page I didn’t feel did her justice. I contacted her and set up a fun shoot for early Sunday morning in the Farmer’s Market area of downtown Oklahoma City. I have shot at that location several times in the past and always like the variety of backgrounds you can get by just walking around.
Part of my “style” is that I want more action in my photos. I get really bored with pictures of people just looking at the camera, so for this shoot I wanted Isabella to be doing something, not just posing for the camera. She and her mom arrived early at a local McDonald’s where we went over some concepts and came up with a shoot plan for the morning.
As usual on an early July morning, it was already HOT and getting hotter by the minute. I set up an Einstein flash with a pocketwizard transmitter/receiver and went to work quickly. For these photos I wanted a narrow depth of field and because of the bright sunshine, I used a neutral density filter on my lens to cut some of the sunlight. This was balanced with both natural light and my flash with a grid to get an entire range of pictures that I am very happy with. Isabella did a great job and despite being only 15 years old, she was very relaxed and comfortable in front of the camera. We worked quickly, moving from spot to spot, and captured a variety of different pictures and looks all in about an hour of shooting.
Looking forward to working with Isabell again, hopefully on some commercial or editorial projects.
