Captured this just outside the Forbidden City. Nothing like training communist patriotism at such a young age

I did my first studio shoot yesterday with the help of Craig as my model and Phil graciously letting me snarf some time in his studio last night. Instead of using Phil’s lighting equipment, I brought my own along since that is what I’ll be using as I dive into glamour/fashion photography more. My lighting setup consisted of 2 manfrotto stands, 2 shoot through umbrellas, 2 flashes (Canon 430EX and a Vivitar 285HV).

Not only was this my first time shooting in a “real” studio, but also the first time I’ve had to give model direction and have that model sitting around waiting for me to setup a shot. Thankfully this was just Craig, and I didn’t mind having him sit around while I experimented (which was the whole point of the night anyways). I consider this payback for me cheering him on the sidelines of his last half-ironman at Lake Stevens.

Photographing a male model was funny to me because I found it difficult to get creative poses without it screaming like an ad for Tiger Beat Magazine. Here are some of the photos:

Rest of the pictures are on Flickr. I only managed to sort through 7 of the photos since I got home so late last night off the shoot. As I sort through the remaining photos, I’ll be adding them to Flickr so check back there in a few days for more Craig-goodness.

After going through this, I can definitely see the value in having (a) great equipment and (b) having an assistant. It would have made it so much simpler to have someone with me how could have adjusted the angle and height of the umbrellas instead of having to put my camera down, adjust the lighting and re-setup the shot.

I’ve been super happy with most of the equipment I have so far, except for a few things:

1. The cheap “Cactus v2″ radio triggers are driving me insane. They misfire or don’t fire at all about 10% of the time. While that doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, it drove me insane to potentially lose a great shot. However, I’m not yet ready to spent the money on the pricier (and infinitely more reliable) Pocket Wizards.
2. I need a vertical battery grip for my camera in a bad way. Composing portrait shot after portrait shot with my 70-200/2.8 was insane to try to balance in my hand and forced to take multiple shots due to hand shake.

Phil uses continuous light sources in addition to flashes, which gives him a lot of ambient light. Since he has a fixed studio location this makes a lot of sense since he isn’t carrying his gear around like I am.

I was only using my strobes to light the studio area, so the ambient light was really low when composing the shot, so my camera had some trouble focusing at times. This forced me to have to manual focus more times than I would have liked. I may have to give in and using his continuous lighting just to get more ambient light to make it easier on my auto-focus.

Btw, for those who want to buy me a random gift out of the kindness of their hearts, consider this on my wish list

1. Canon BG-E2 Vertical Battery Grip
2. Sterlingtek Canon BP-511 knock-off battery (why pay 7 times the price for the Canon branded one?)
3. Vivitar 285HV (a third strobe would really help give me some flexbility in backlight situations)
4. Four Pocket Wizards (I need one for each of my strobes )

Thanks again to Craig for being such a patient experimental model for me and Phil for providing the crucial studio space for me. You guys both rock!

Tonight was a set of firsts:

• My first self-portrait
• My first strobist photo I’ve done on my own
• My first strobist photo with a grid snoot (or snoot for that matter)

I wish the focal point was more on my right eye instead of the center of my face, but it’s damn hard to get it right when you’re balancing the camera on your knee with one hand and using the other hand to hold the flash with the snoot mounted on it!

This brings me this much closer to actually committing to doing “365“, which is taking a self-portrait every day for a year. Everyone in my photo group seems to be doing this and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that part of this really interested me. Besides, it makes it really easy to have a patient model when it’s yourself

However, I’m having a hard time believing that I won’t forget to do it once in 365 days, and I don’t want to rush them. With usually 9-11 hour work days for my “real” job, the last thing I want to do is feel forced to do my hobby. Then again, maybe this is the kick in the butt I need to push me to the next level in my photography pursuits?

I had the fortunate pleasure of photographing Megan, Didi and Rachel a short time ago for Green Is Sexy.

During the shoot I made the mistake of concentrating too much on individual portraits, instead of really nailing the group shots which, in retrospect, should have been the no brainer to start with, since promotionally, it should have been obvious to me that they’d want to use shots of them all together. By the time I realized I was missing essential group shots, we lost a lot of the best light. Not my finest hour in group portraiture

If you are ever doing a group portrait session, and have a limited amount of time, don’t neglect the group shots like I did. Otherwise you’ll be kicking yourself like I still am!

The shoot resulted in about 350 photos in the final handover package to them that I cut to DVD. They are using some of the photographs on their About Us section, and I think the ones they’ve chosen work really well with their current fall theme.

Don’t forget to drop by the “Meet the Artists” event tonight for the Seattle Flickr Photo show!  Drop by Cafe Vega anytime between 7 and 9pm.