Part 2: Portrait Photography: All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

Part 2: Portrait Photography

All of my Mentees from Westlake High School.

I like to start my training off with Abstract which was covered in the last blog post. I do this because the subject matter is not talking back to us. I tell my students that Portrait and Wedding photography are a totally different beasts. Portrait is especially gruelling because the subject is looking dead at the camera (often), meaning staring at you the photographer, and waiting for you to finish this grueling experience of having to get their photograph taken. The more the subject is sweating, the more you sweat.  More often than not, we as photographers are required to entertain the subject while navigating the controls on our camera (that we cannot see clearly because our sweat is dripping on the viewfinder) and praying to God that our wireless triggers and lighting will not suddenly stop communicating with each other (which they do). Portrait photography is indeed stressful for those reasons.

Krishan wanted to photograph an exotic car. My friend offered up his Bentley and we set up to do some spot lighting around the car which we would then composite each lit area together later in Photoshop.

spot Lighting Bentley with Austin architectural photographer Johnny Stevens

But I thought, HEY – why not add in an element of stress and pay a pretty model to pose by the car? That would be good training for a student!

Summer posing with Bentley

Summer pose 2 with Bentley

And the final edited image after we composted all the spot lighting on the house and the car and replaced the house windows with an ambient shot.

Final composition of Exotic Car Portrait with model Summer

For my Mentee Elena, we headed downtown and scouted for a spot to shoot a portrait of Lauren. Deep in an ally with homeless guys, was the back entrance to a bar on 6th street. I loved the graffitti. Elena and I switched positions holding the umbrella with a strobe.

Lauren set up with Elena holding the light

Lauren Portrait finalKrishan want

Elena needed a senior portrait done so I made her set up this scene on Barton Creek and then pose on a rock.

Elena self portrait

My friend Lane volunteered to be our subject for Nolan’s portrait exercise. Fortunately, Lane Orsak needed a new portrait to promote his new book called Dylan’s Divide and he had some new artwork he just completed. And even more fortunately, Lane’s portrait turned out to be one of my favorite ever. Nolan and I spot lighted the background and composited those behind an image of Lane which we lighted with one big soft light on camera right, and a kicker light on camera left.

Lane Orsak Portrait final

I took Morgan with me to a commercial shoot of  Austin artist Truman Marquez’s Gallery. We photographed two models separately and composited them both into the final image.

Art Gallery portrait

Portrait Photography Austin

Portrait Photography Austin

Morgan also helped me arrange and execute a more complicated Portrait that I photographed for the purposes of entering for judging with the Professional Photographers of America. We hired 3 models and rented the outfits from Lucy in Disquise here in Austin. Rocky the lab was free.

Samantha helping set up the Gangster Scene

“Stalemate” Gangster photograph final

And also for Krishan we set up a backdrop and hired a model to do some 3 point lighting set ups, including main light, bounced fill light, and kicker light.

Skylar Portrait set up

Skylar Portrait final