Luxury Car Portrait with a Model
- At November 27, 2019
- By Johnny Stevens
- In Fine Art, portrait, spot lighting
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I am a mentor for students at Westlake High School for the Independent Study Program for those students who want to learn photography. This semester Krishan, one of my two mentees wanted to shoot a car portrait so I treated him to a Luxury Car Portrait with a Model. Fortunately, I have a buddy who has a spectacular home and a Bentley in the garage. Summer was the model, and Jeff Zavala of Z Creative Media shot this lovely video of the photo shoot. At about dusk, we first shot a set of bracketed images of the car only. Then we walked around the car spotlighting it so we could paint in those lit spots in Photoshop later in post. Then we brought Summer in and shot her with several different poses.
Student Housing Pool Deck
Student Housing Pool Deck at 191 College
This is a great example of one of American Campus‘ student housing Pool decks. It is at 191 College in Auburn Alabama. The lighting at night is really spectacular. When shooting architectural photography like the student housing pool deck, I try to shoot as much as I can 30 minutes before sunset to about 30 minutes after sunset. When the ambient light get closer to matching the interior or deck lights, the combination is very lovely.
Architectural photo of 191 College pool deck sitting area at dusk
Architectural photo of 191 College pool deck at dusk
Architectural photo of 191 College pool deck at dusk
Aerial Drone Architectural Photography
Aerial Drone Architectural Photography
Some recent good examples of Aerial Drone Architectural Photography show how getting up just 10 or 20 feet can make all the difference in an exterior of a building. These are both apartments complexes. The Lyndon pool is in San Marcos and the 959 Franklin images are from Eugene, Oregon. In those you can see that it was raining but I had just enough time to launch the Mavic Pro and shoot these two angles. The sky was ugly so replacing the sky in Photoshop was easy and necessary.
Aerial Drone architectural Photograph of 959 Franklin angle 2
Aerial Drone architectural Photograph of 959 Franklin
Aerial Drone architectural Photograph of The Lyndon San Marcos
Austin Family Portrait Photography with kids
Austin Family Portrait Photography with kids
Photographing an Austin Family Portrait with kids is very rewarding but comes with built in challenges. Managing a nice conversation with the clients while setting up a 12 foot backdrop and a 72 inch umbrella on a 300 WS Vision 4 strobe is not easy. Especially when there are 3 kids under the age of 7 wanting to play with the camera gear. But I let them play with it as long as it is secure because it makes them invested in the 2 minutes that we are going to be shooting.
I let the kids trigger the wireless light from the camera so they can watch it pop. That’s big fun for them. But my biggest tick in the bag is being sure my wife is there to help. While I am behind the camera pulling the trigger, she has Bert and Ernie puppets behind my back popping up over my shoulder to provide just one single flash of a smile. That’s all I need. Samantha is the queen of managing kids and parents and her always profusely sweating photographer husband Johnny.
Austin Family portrait with 3 kids
Photographing Student Housing with the drone
Photographing Student Housing with the drone
How many times have I just wanted to get the camera up 10 feet to really showcase the exteriors of some of the student housing properties I have shot? Photographing aerial Student Housing with the drone is the simple answer because the drone allows me to get a different perspective on the property. Usually I noticed that I do get some keystoning distortion simply because I am often shooting down. This is easily corrected with the vertical perspective tool in Camera Raw in Photoshop. Here an example of the difference in perspective from ground photographs off the tripod and similar ones from the drone. These are both the same property by American Campus Communities.
Ground photo from tripod of the pool at Townhomes at Newtowne in Lexington
Aerial Drone photo from Mavic Pro drone of the pool at Townhomes at Newtowne in Lexington
