March Lightplay {Utah Photography}

One of my goals this year is to play more with lighting and so I gave myself the assignment of doing a different lighting project every month. I am reading a really fun book The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally and sometimes I challenge myself to recreate something he has done but with my own twist, 'cause y'know, nobody likes a copycat. :)

The above photo was inspired by one of Joe's where he is shooting through a rainy window and while I want to play with that idea too as I was reading the section an image through blinds immediately popped into my head. Luckily I have kids who are always willing to help (or willing to be bribed). This is my daughter and we are just in my front room and I have a Nikon SB800 flash outside on a lightstand in Remote mode and I am using my on Camera flash in Commander mode to trigger it through my open front door. We took a bunch but I especially loved the repeating stripe elements in this one as well as the shadow on the wall and the downturned face that I feel makes your eyes travel through the photo instead of getting stuck on the subject's eyes.

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