p.s. It was a beautiful day with zero rain!

I had fun hanging out with my good friend, Will West, at the Portland Music Awards Sunday night at The Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR.  Will was nominated for Best Male Artist of The Year and his album, Take This Moment, was nominated for Best Album of the Year! Congrats to Skip for winning Outstanding Achievement in Classical Music for the Portland Cello Project!

Liz from LHK Marketing and Claudine from Tap the Joy joined me in the studio for a portrait shoot. I wanted to create a soft white light that emulated a window on a cloudy day. We aimed a strobe at a large white wall in the studio, creating the same effect as if we had a 20ft soft box.

The shadows are soft, and the light creates a slow gradient from one side of her face to the other. The light is directional, too, so the shadows under her hair is preserved and creates contrast. That direction also brings out the texture of her clothes and hair.

In general what we do in the studio is create a lighting that the viewer has seen before and expects. If we can successfully create a light that looks natural, the viewer will believe in the scene and never think twice about where the shot was taken.

Originally there were more locations including a weight room, the restaurant bar, and a ballroom, but moving and setting up equipment takes time so I chose the best three locations for this 9-hour shoot.

The squash court has geometric lines and a gorgeous wood floor that made the clothes pop. It is also the easiest location to control the lighting so choosing to shoot there was an easy choice. The pool has its drawbacks including splashing kids and a huge room to yell across to the models, but the reflection of the water created a dynamic shot so that location was in.

The weather was so inconsistent that I didn’t think we could do an outside location, but the tennis court was unused and the backdrop of the city was tremendous so we will take our chances.

Oh and by the way, the weather didn’t stay dry but we still got some great rainy photos by putting our flash inside and pointing it out the doorway toward the model.