Ron Shoots

I shot in the Maui studio today with Natina, a new model headed to NYC in just a few weeks. This was our second shoot. The first one was outside, but the last few days have been overcast so we decided to shoot inside. Natina’s mom came along on the first shoot and again today- always great to have a stylist and a proud mom on the set. The mom modeled back in her 20s as well, and we’ve set up a mother-daughter shoot for early December.

Tech Notes

These images were lit with Interfit 1000 lightpanels. The panels are 22 inches square, but only 3 inches thick. (You can see one to the left of Natina’s mom.) There’s daylight-balanced modeling lights as well as strobe tubes in each one. The power can be controlled from full down to 1/32 ratio. I shot with my Canon 1DsMII and 24-105mm lens at 100 ISO around f/11. The center image is with the model behind a translucent fabric so those waves of color are really in the shot. While our Charlotte studio is big, bright and white with skylights, the Maui studio has charcoal gray walls- and its small- only 7×10 feet!

Here’s a follow-up note from the model that appeared out of nowhere on my Washington, DC shoot a couple weeks ago.
“I loved the pictures so much. Our meeting was providential. I was looking for something that could give the meaning of the title of my poetry book which is “The Voices of the Silence”. Thanks to God I end up with these professional images. Again I appreciate the gift and hope to keep in touch with you.”

I’m home after 3 weeks on the road! (I’ve been home for 6 of the past 60 days…) Great to see my family! Have a few small shoots in the next week or so, then off to California on November 17th for a 5 day aerial shoot on the West Coast. More on that later… By the way, I’m sooooo smart now… must have stayed at 30 Holiday Inn Express motels over the past 2 months!

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!

I’m in NYC for 2 days of meetings and visiting the annual Photo Plus East trade show.

This is a funny, but true story! About 3 years ago, I shot some NYC scenics at night (much like the picture below) with my Canon 1Ds MII. As the retouchers were going over the file, Shelly said “I wonder if I can find a naked guy in one of these windows?” Well, sure enough, there was a naked guy doing his dishes in one of the windows.

Now if I shoot a scene on this trip with the H2D-39 and those 39 megapixel files, we might be able to see if he’s washing fine china or cheap dinnerware…