Test shoot with Byrd, Benz Models

I had a lot of fun with this shoot. Everyone who has shot with me before knows I'm not a smiley picture type of person, but I just love the way these came out. Here are my favorite shots from my test shoot with Byrd. Makeup was doen by Monique McLaughlin.

Kayla Deconstructed

Today was a really beautiful day! The temperature was great, the lighting perfect on my front porch so I decided to take advantage of it. I had my hubby help me drag my background outside, and we did the entire shoot out there. I wanted simple shots, something reminiscent of old Calvin Klein ads. I went into the shoot planning to change everything in black and white. One look at Kayla in that lighting though and I totally reneged. LOL. The lighting was soft and really gorgeous. As always at the end of the shoot, we took the wardrobe down to the bare minimal and did the last frames super simple. Here are my fav shots.

Au Naturale

Most times when you're wrapped up in fashion photography there is the stress of makeu-up, hair, clothes, setting, and a plethora of other mundane details that go into a sucessful shoot. Every now and then I need to take a step back. It can burn you out having to obsess over every detail, especially without the help or extra set of eyes. There's nothing worse than going through a whole shoot and not realizing a garment's unbuttoned or the hair is completely out of place. When shooting I tend to have tunnel vision, and can miss a lot of small details. I now see why most magazine shoots have a whole team of assistants, and others just to see to the minor details. Anyway, I digress. The reason for this blog post is to talk about those times when I get burnt out on the details and  minutia of fashion photography. It's not really plausible for me to just stop shooting, I go nuts. Almost to the point of twitching. :) Anyway, so when I get to the point where I'm burnt out on fashion, I turn to simpler shoots. Shoots that don't require a lot in the way of clothes make-up and concepts, but artistic enough to calm the muse.
So when Laticia came to me and said she wanted to do a shoot with no make-up, very natural, I was esctatic. She just needed simple headshots for her book, right up my alley. So we headed out to a field with just my camera and us. The resulting shots are great portraits, with very minimal editing. I shot the whole thing into the sun so other than some changing of the levels, and a simple gradient filter I hardly had to touch the shots. Here are the results, very natural, and beautiful.