John and Kathy

I recently had a session with John and Kathy. They had not had a portrait taken together in about 20 years. Deifinitely time to rectify that!

It gave me an opportunity to use one of my new backgrounds and to work with some gels for color.

The background here is normally brown. Since they both had on clothes with a touch of purple in them I figured a purple accent on the background would fit nicely.


The setup was pretty simple. Just three lights and a flag to keep the light from the main from spilling onto the background and washing it out. Thanks to Kevin Kertz (www.kevinkertz.com) for the great lighting diagram images for Photoshop.

We shot a few and I showed them the images right on the computer as we were taking them. They loved the immediate feedback!

We tried a few different poses until we hit on one they really liked. A discrete inquiry led to some retouching to "turn back the clock" by a few years. They were very pleased. A nice 11x14 of this photo hangs in their living room.

Click on any image to see a larger version.

A couple more beauty shots

Vanessa's photo has been very well received. I have gotten several calls from others wanting to do a similar shot.

Rachel and Angie both wanted to do a session at the same time so they could coordinate the makeup with Christine M. who again did a brilliant job. A good makeup artist can really make a shoot that much more successful. Not to mention the massively reduced amount of retouching needed. :)

Well, this time, we did not have to deal with the heat since the studio is nicely air conditioned.

The setup was a little different than the shots with Vanessa. We went for a simpler, two light setup. Main light either camera right and a reflector opposite with a light boomed above.

The girls were a lot of fun to work with. They decided to have a little fun after the beauty shots so we did some impromptu posing work.

Here's a couple outtakes. Yes, they were having fun! We all were.

Click on any photo to see a larger version. Blogger really eats the images when it resizes them.

The train! The train!

OK, bad pun, I know. What do you want? I'm a photographer, not a comedian.

The 261 Steam Locomotive www.261.com was out again this weekend for their annual fall color trip. I was able to actually ride it this year! A very nice time for any train aficionado. There's nothing like a ride on a train being pulled by a coal burning locomotive.

Of course there were dozens of photographers and general train buffs with their cameras all over the place.

I have many, many photographs of the 261 so now when I go to photograph it I am looking for the "perfect" shot. It's a very difficult object to photograph because it is all black. The light has to be just right in order to make it really sing. And there are all the people hanging around when it's not in motion.

To me, a photograph of a train not in motion is pretty boring. These steam giants really show their stuff as they get going. Oh, I asked how often the slip the drive wheels and for the record, the engineer said that's just for Hollywood. No real engineer would ever do that, he said.

Click on the photo to see a larger version.