Family Maternity Shoot

This lovely family came back to the studio for round two now that they are on the brink of having their second child. You can see their first session here: Alexander the Great.

Alexander turned out to be quite the photo assistant this time around. I may have to consider hiring him ;-)

Photographic proof

The teacher from the class I spoke at (see my last post) sent me a couple photos that she took while I was teaching and said that I could post them here. I blurred out the two student's faces that were showing.

Just in case you can't tell from the little photo and don't want to click to make it bigger, I'm the small person wearing red and crouching down in the middle.

Students, Strobes, and Feet

Some high school students got a chance to rock out with my studio lights today!

A friend of mine is doing a photography class with her advanced students at a local private school. All semester long she is inviting professional photographers to come speak to the students and give demonstrations on different aspects of photography. I was invited to speak on and demonstrate studio strobe lighting.

I brought in a pared-down studio strobe setup:

• 3 lights - one with the 2x3 softbox, one with a reflective umbrella, and one just to show to the students
  
• light stands, of course
  
• the light meter and
  
• 5 sandbags (yes, five sandbags that had to be carried up three flights of stairs- I have no idea what I was thinking. Luckily there were strong, young students to help me with that). They had their own grey backdrop to shoot against.

We went over all the equipment, use, and setup. The students really knew their stuff and did a good job answering my questions.

After that they got about 30 minutes to take turns using my lights with their own cameras. They looked like they were having fun. I can't wait to see the results. I only wish we'd had more time to experiment with different lighting setups. They will get a chance to do that on their own with their teacher this week, though.

Back in the day I was an art teacher and it was really nice to have the chance to fill that role again. Just as I will always be a photographer, I am, and always will be, a teacher too.

Because all of the students are minors and I didn't have permission to photograph them, I'm not able to post any photos of the fun experimentation that ensued except for this one chance capture. I was specifically trying not to photograph anyone while still showing how the transmitter on the camera would trigger the flash.

The shoe on the right belongs to a young gentleman who was stunningly dressed in a traditional kilt. He was a popular subject for the day. The flip-flops belong to one of the young ladies who assisted me in tearing down afterward. Those two were a godsend.

St Andrews

Today I did a shoot similar to the Halloween Birthday Party... except without the costumes and the birthday. St. Andrew's church asked me if I would be interested in doing some of the portraits for their directory and I said yes. Here are a few of my favorites.

Headshots and Sisters over the Holidays

I took a looooong holiday break to take care of some family matters so I haven't had a chance to post here in a while. While I was 'on break' I did a photo shoot with two sisters. One lives here in Austin and the other in Boston. They were visiting over the holidays and decided to get headshots done. While we were at it we took some more candid photos of the two of them together as well. The candid at the bottom is a favorite of mine.

A fine young gentleman

All in one day I had the pleasure of photographing two fine young gentlemen. The first was Alexander, from my previous post. This second fine young gentleman is quite a bit more mature.

Although there is a lovely seriousness to many of the photographs, this young man and his brother-in-law had me cracking up almost as much as little Alexander did just an hour or so earlier. It was a full but very fun day.

And here I present to you the fine young gentleman, Angus.

I love that he chose to bring a few copies of The Economist magazine to the shoot. A magazine is one of those great props that can really help to get a personality across. And this one just happened to match one of his outfits so we ended up using it in quite a few shots.

Alexander the Great!

You have to agree, just looking at these pictures, that Alexander is great. Not only is he cute but also smart. This not-quite-two-year-old was singing his ABCs during the photo shoot.




Near the end of the shoot Alexander decided to play peak-a-boo with the basket. My eyes were watering because I was laughing so hard. He is such a character and it was so much fun to photograph him and his parents.