Miss Jillian in the Snow {Utah Photography}

I love concept shoots and I love pictures in the snow! Just fyi, a concept shoot for me is where I have a picture rolling around in my head and am finally able to put the pieces together and shoot it. It’s kinda like saying “Shave and a haircut….” and then when you do the shoot and see the final photos you get to sing at the top of your lungs “TWOOOOOOOOOO BIIIIIIIIITS!!!!!”

It feels good.

This beautiful girl is the lovely and talented Miss Jillian Tirado. She doesn’t have her last name on her fbook profile for me to double check so I sincerely hope that I am spelling it correctly. We first talked about this shoot ages upon ages ago. Originally we were going to do it in the fall. I had some idea of it being the last fairy of fall about to go to sleep before the winter but now that I see everything put together it works much better as a snow fairy, don’t you think? We wanted to start a little earlier in the day to get day and night looks but due to a small driving mishap we got started a little late. Jillian valiantly offered to postpone but she had done so much work on hair and makeup (did you notice the forehead jewels) that there was no way I wasn’t going to see what I could get. I am actually delighted with how they turned out.

I forgot to mention that this shoot doubled as my lightplay monthly photo project for February. I was playing with off camera flash and the sky. The sky part is hard to explain but see the lovely blue in the shot below? That's what I was trying to get on that shot. Just a little backstory: at this point in the evening it is so dark that I can't see Jillian's face through my camera viewfinder.


Luckily Jillian has agreed to play again so you will see more of her to come. I love being surrounded by artistic, creative people. Thank you Jillian!

p.s. Here is the link to the rest.
http://fineart.illuminephotography.com/jillian

We make this, look good! {Utah Family Photography}

I'm starting this post with one of the last images from the photo shoot because this was the main image that we were trying to capture. A good friend of mine had purchased this fantastic dress for her daughter and wanted to tailor the shoot around having her look like a movie star in a back alley, like she was headed to the theater surrounded by her bodyguards. She even said that she wanted to have her boys have a Men in Black look. When she said that I was hooked!
I was originally planning to do this image in Salt Lake but the day before the shoot my friend called me and said that she also wanted to have her kids portraits taken at the ponds in Kaysville so in order to have the time to get both images we decided on taking the above in a little alley behind the Kaysville theater. I really like how it turned out though I would have wished for some ambient lights in the background. If that light over the doorway would have been on it might have made this perfect. The kids were so fun and so willing to try anything. As it turned out I was glad that we hadn't tried to go to Salt Lake because the little one had had it by the time we were done. We had to bribe him with frozen yogurt...it was really good! As a general rule I try to keep family sessions to an hour though sometimes more stylized sessions like this take more time. It takes a lot of energy to have your photos taken and kids especially don't need too long of a marathon session.

This was a quick grab shot as we were starting. I love casual images like this and the light was just magic. I took out a lot of flying cotton which is a bit sad because I loved the look of it but this turned out to be one of the clients favorite images and I don't think she wants white smears all over her gorgeous wall portrait.
I get many questions about what to shoot from aspiring photographers. I tell them to shoot from their heart and they tend to look at me with baffled expressions. You know those moments where you see something and your breath catches a little and your heart skips a beat? Take the shot! I don't care if it's random, or unplanned, or not what you were looking for. Those are the pictures that mean the most. And if they don't turn out? Who cares! Creativity is a muscle that needs to be developed, just like anything else.


Love the casual walking shots. I was telling them to walk in slow motion so I had more time to shoot and they started going into slow-mo walk and we were all laughing so hard and I just kept shooting. I absolutely love the image below. My cheeks hurt just looking at it and remembering how much fun we had!
Thanks guys! I can't wait for what we come up with for the next shoot!

It all started with a picture I had in my head. {Utah Photography}

This picture, to be precise. Please welcome to the blog stage Anna, who not only is an amazingly talented individual but happens to be my counterpart in the show I am currently involved in. I've known Anna for a little while now and that she was involved in Guard. Last October {2010} I was doing my creative fog thing and suddenly a picture came into my head of Anna flipping a flag and having multiple flags around her head. I mentioned it to her and we set up a shoot only to have the weather completely ruin it. Remember how crazy the weather was last fall, and this winter, and this spring? Anyway, during auditions for the aforementioned show we decided to try again and this time the weather was perfect, even to the point of threatening us with rain which just meant that we had cool clouds in the background. This was perfect as I had decided to bring out my lighting equipment for this shoot. The point being to be able to use the sun as a rimlight/backlight and have enough light using my flash as key that I didn't have to blow out the sky and clouds behind her. It's a different look than what I prefer for regular portraiture in that it's a little, not sure what the term would be...harder?...more commercial? Well, I did want a less soft look and that's why I picked this location. A few of the shots are done with natural light because I always want to experiment with everything I can. That's how you learn. My brother Ben came and shot with us, here's the link to his thoughts on the day.

http://bwoodstock.blogspot.com/2011/07/shoot.html

This was obviously done with no flash. I wanted a silhouette look.


This is against the portraiture "rules" of having your subjects face turned towards the light.
I have no problem with the rules or with breaking them. The point is, you need to know the rules so that when you break them you do it on purpose, not by accident. I was going for a dramatic feel and loved the shadows having her turned away cast on her face. Did I shoot one with her turned the other way? Of course I did...but I like this one better for what I was going for. Would grandma like this one better? Probably not, and that's why I did both.

Ben had a shot he wanted where her face was in focus but everything else was movement blurred. I tried it too but ended up liking the blur better. His turned out well. How we did that was lower our ISO as low as it could go so we could use a slower shutter speed, mount our cameras on a tripod and take two exposures. One with her holding still for her face and one with the flag moving. Then in Photoshop you move the in focus face onto the blurred one and voila!

Sometimes I can't decide whether I like color or black and white better.

Natural light, didn't want to try to haul my flash into the floor-less and dilapidated old rail car.

She also brought a saber and a rifle. The girl has mad skills. I love her lines in this shot.

These two were taken within minutes of each other. Isn't it amazing how you can change looks completely just by changing camera settings? Here's my mini-lecture. LEARN HOW TO SHOOT IN MANUAL!!!!! They are both with natural light (I love how the sun is back-lighting her hair in the above shot) but the above was for what I would call regular portrait and below an almost silhouette.

This was the "oh, let's just take one more" shot. It may be my very most favorite. I love the rim light on her body. I love her lines. Love the clouds moving in. See the rain in the middle right side? Love the sun flare!

It was a fun day but we were to tired to stick around for light painting. That will have to wait for next time. Instead we ended the night with a McDonald's pineapple-mango smoothie. If you haven't tried one yet, do so. You will thank me! I also got the shot I saw in my head so successful day? Yes!