Ron Shoots

Wonderful shoot today in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia! Worked with a brother & sister talent team who had to act as if they were a couple. “No kissing” said the female model, “I might need therapy if I had to kiss my brother!” They were awesome at conveying closeness and fun.

Chilly morning!

The morning started out at 21 degrees and maybe climbed to the mid-40s. Fortunately, we were shooting “fall color” so sweaters and jackets were the required wardrobe. Sunshine really helped in the morning, then the clouds moved in after lunch.

Cue the flash and ears forward!

Grey clouds on an almost winter day are the perfect background for outdoor portraits if you add flash. We selected the horse to match the trees in the background (seriously!) so that the rider would be more prominent. The flash is our Hensel Porty with a small 26×20 softbox attached to the flash head. There was quite a bit of ambient light so the get the background to go slightly dark I needed to push the shutter speed up to 1/350 and use an aperture of around f/11. The flash powerpack was set at full-power.

As you may know, we’re really big on authenticity. We try to work with people that know their stuff, especially when it comes to technical things like riding horses. I learned today that a good image of a horse is always with their ears forward. We had one of the horse people just off-camera rustling leaves to entice our four-legged friend to perk up his ears.

Horses don’t always stand still and Camelot was no exception. Our rider said “he rides great but his ground manners leave a little to be desired…” as she continued to maneuver him into the right pose. I think we must have changed position 20 times to get the angle just right, and dodging “you know what” with every step!