It’s a common practice of mine to let my images sit a few days after a shoot before I look at them – it gives my emotions from the shoot day a chance to dissipate, so I can look at the images with fresh eyes.

My last assignment was to incorporate motion into a portrait.  This one was a lot easier for me on the idea front and as soon as Ken told us our challenge, I knew what I wanted to do.  I wanted to create a portrait that contained elements of focus in addition to the elements of motion.

While I was shooting my assignments, I also shot some straight up portraits.  Thanks to Bethany (model) and Teal Druda (hair and make up) for helping me out with this shoot.

Taking a portrait of someone laying down has its own challenges and can be done in many ways.  When someone is laying down, two important things to consider are the type of surface they are laying on and how their clothes (and in my case, jewelry) will lay.  These factors will ultimately effect how their body will look in the photo.  What was more important for me however, was camera angle and point of view.  I wanted to be on the same level as my model – when I am laying down and photographing (especially if my subject is also laying down), the rest of the world seems to melt away and I find I connect with my subject on a whole other psychological level.  For this assignment, I shot a model I had never worked with before – which is something I love doing.  Prior to the shoot I had no idea what I wanted my final image to look like – the only thing I had going into it was my colour palette.

The idea of taking two portraits of the same person using different techniques had me making lists of things I could try – strobe vs natural light, colour vs b&w, high key vs low key, etc.  In the end I opted  for natural light, colour, and lensbaby vs hot lights, b&w, and my tried and true 24-70mm lens.

After feeding the animals, we stopped by the lorikeet exhibit to feed the birds.  It’s basically a big open area (covered by netting) and the birds fly around and land on you.  It’s the kind of place that’s probably pretty terrible if you have a fear of birds, but pretty magical if you don’t.

You can see more images from my trip to the Nashville Zoo in my portfolio.

Thanks to Patrick for getting dolled up and sitting for me at all hours of the night.

Make up & hair VERONICA LANE
Hair JOHNNY SANGA
Styling AUTUMN STEED
Model ALEXANDRA MATHEWS

I’ve been inspired by motion recently and wanted to add an element of that into this shoot.  I spent a good while trying to get it to happen in camera, without getting the result I was looking for.  So I had to do it in post.  I like doing things practically as much as possible, but in this case it was actually ideal to take care of this effect afterward as it allowed me to have much greater control.  You can go here and here to see more from this shoot…

The black and white version is the new edit and the colour version is the original edit.  Seeing the two images together made me think about all the things that effect how I choose to retouch an image…not the least of which is what is going on in my life and how I’m feeling about it.

I look back fondly on this shoot – it was the last time I was back home (Ottawa, Ontario) for any length of time.  Anna Finlayson did amazing make up and Jennilee was a trooper for being up to her knees in snow in a very short dress (I was bundled up and still freezing my ass off!)

We hiked up to Malibu Creek Canyon and walked along the creek until we found what I figured was a pretty secluded place – that is, until we were waist deep in water as a group of about 20 children walked by – according to their comments, our shoot was “rated M for mature”.  Props to Linda for braving the cold water and maintaining her composure.

Shooting a group of people (3 or more) is fun in that you can play around with breaking the group up into smaller sub-groups (my preference is to always have odd-numbered groups of people).  Groups can be more challenging in terms of lighting, but by your arrangement of people, you can always create a dynamic, visually compelling image.  Now we get into shooting the double portrait…the reason this is the most challenging for me is two-fold.  First, you can’t really break up your subjects into smaller groups of odd numbers because (and here is reason number two) shooting a double portrait is about shooting the relationship between two people.  In shooting a double portrait you have to create a visually compelling image that draws the viewer in and makes them understand the relationship.

When shooting a portrait, no matter how many people are involved, I feel it’s important to not only make the portrait informational, but emotional as well.  As Paul Strand once said, “it is one thing to photograph people.  It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their human-ness.”

Among other things, he works as a contortionist at the Venice sideshow.  We got together one day so I could take some photos of him – let me tell you, this kid is no joke.