Always Kiss Me Goodnight

Randy and Emily have a sign above their bed that says, "Always Kiss Me Goodnight." So we took some pictures of their family giving kisses and then designed a collage that was printed on a huge 30x30 canvas to hang above that sign. Lots of fun!

Family Portraits @ The Beach

This past weekend we went to the beach for Labor Day weekend and took the opportunity to make a good family portrait. I took a huge 50" Apollo Softbox out there with me and set the camera on a Bogen tripod. I shot this at 24mm to include as much as the beach and ocean as I could. I was using high speed sync to get the aperture I wanted and to combat the setting sun that was directly in front of the camera. We ended up at 1/3200 at f/2.8 and ISO 200.

Here's a diagram of the setup:

Emily's Senior Portraits

It took us a couple of times to get this session in. The first time we got rained on 5 minutes into it. We finished them up on Saturday evening and had great weather. I love how the sun acted as a hair light and rimmed her out so nicely. Here are my favorites:

Help Portrait

If you're a photographer, I hope you will consider this great idea by Jeremy Cowart. Watch the video and then get involved!

http://www.help-portrait.com
http://www.twitter.com/help_portrait

Father of the Bride

The Father of the Bride plays such a special role in any wedding. Here's a look at Ashley's father on the day of her wedding:

Clint Kirby

My friend Clint Kirby and his wife, Missy, will be leaving next month with a team to plant a church in Gdansk, Poland. They are being sent by an organization called Avant Ministries. The Avant magazine is doing an article on Clint and needed some pictures so while he was in town this weekend, we went over to Orlando and took some pictures. The first place we went was Infusion Tea which is a great little tea/coffee house on Edgewater Dr. If you're ever down there, stop in. Here are my favorites from the day:

Corporate Head Shots

I was hired this past week to do some head shots for a local business (60 head shots to be exact). This is actually one of the easiest things to do because once you set the light, it doesn't change... as long as you're in manual mode with the camera AND the flash. If you're in manual, once you get the correct exposure and color balance, you just snap a picture and say, "NEXT!".

In a situation like this, TTL is not your friend. Neither is aperture priority on the camera. Why? Because things will change on you based on the skin color, hair color, and outfit of each person who stands in. Exposure is exposure. So when you aren't moving around, manual mode is the way to go.

Here's a setup shot. I used a 28" softbox with an SB800 in it at 1/4 power. I added a reflector on the other side for fill. Shot all the shots in manual mode f/5.6 and 1/250.