As I’ve said before I’m a “news-ie” at heart because I love to tell stories. But there are real stories that I try to tell visually and ones that are only in my head that I try to illustrate with my camera. Portraits are almost always stories in my head. More and more with portraits I want to take on a different approach to the story than a straight “just the facts mam” news-ie would. Mostly because I can and often the “straight” portrait is just so awfully painfully boring. I hate boring.
So to that end my friend Aimee, who is a reporter and fashion blogger, and I have been wanting to do a photo shoot just for us, meaning something kinda silly because neither of us are quite sane. Thus we got up at the evil crack of dawn to do our thing at a local “auto salvage yard”. Yeah that’s right. One man’s junkyard is another mans perfect background to put a cute gal in. Who needs a beach in Bora Bora? We don’t need no stinkin palm trees!
So this was actually shot at about 7am but I underexposed our lovely Colorado sky to make it darker and the overall tonality moodier. There is a monolight with a 10 degree spot on her face, a monolight into a small softbox to the immediate camera right with a 7inch reflector on a third monolight at far camera right.
I did more post processing than I usually do to maintain the nocture feel that I had in my head when I shot it. It was very bright out when it was shot but that’s the joy of photography: it’s not about what things look like in front of you so much as what things look like in your mind when you trigger the shutter.
Technicals: Nikon D200 @ ISO 100 and daylight WB. Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8 set to 20mm and f/13, 1/250th. Strobes triggered by Pocket Wizards.
The bottom line here is two simple words: El Camino!