Long Time No See!

Well, it's only been nearly a year since I've updated this blog... Ha, at least I have plenty to blog about!

I began working with models soon after my senior year of high school started (Modelmayhem.com ftw!), my 7 deadly sins shoot being the first time with Caroline Mathis.

Since then I have worked with many others and actually have started getting paid for my work, and finally have begun to build a more professional portfolio. (Huzzah!)

[You can see an extended version of it on my flickr]

Oh! And did I forget to mention that I made a Facebook page for Emily Austin Photography??
Well, I did. :) I also updated my actual website (www.emilyaustinphotography.com) if you'd like to check that out!




AAAlright! Now that I've got all that boring stuff out of the way, time for my actual blogging intention: My latest shoot with my friends Grete and Sana:

(Grete)
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    V

(Sana)

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V

You can see more images here on my Facebook page.

We literally had no idea what we were going to do when we started shooting. We had originally planned to have sort of a "candy" shoot, and have fun with bright colours and exciting shennanigans like that... but we only had about an hour to actually shoot, so any sort of extravagant option was out of the question.

So, there we were, two beautiful girls and a photographer... Guess we'll just see what happens! 

I had a reflector, my SB-900 flash, my Nikon D7000, and my (NEW! :D) 70-200 mm F. 2.8 lens. At first, I just wanted to see what we could do with the reflector, but I just wasn't satisfied... it lacked drama, it lacked that special "something" to bring a viewer into an image. 

(Reflector held underneath Sana's face and to her left)

My reflector holding assistant goofing around ;)

Not to mention, I couldn't get my shutter speed high enough to reduce the blur to save my life! (we were in a shaded area) Also, I was getting frustrated by the uneven lighting due to the trees above us (as you can see on Sana's nose). So after a few minutes of failures, I decided to bring out my SB-900... but not in this setting... It was too... obvious. I wanted something we could play with, perhaps get a sense of "Where IS she?"

We walked a little bit, and we eventually came to a covered, but outdoor, apartment hallway. It was a narrow hallway, and suddenly I was inspired by the texture of the walls (Weird, I know...)! I knew right away that I wanted dramatic lighting, so I started out with some angled back light.

I liked it, but the image didn't make any sense to me. What was it about? The colours all looked good together, but as a whole how does it make any sense? It doesn't.







We moved a little further down the hallway, so that there was less ambient light coming from the open hall. I started to have Sana move the flash around a little bit, to see what we could get. We ended up getting a very flattering "sun" effect!

I was much, much happier with this. The lighting fit her expression and went well with the colours. Even though the lines you see are from the stairs, they could be a window to an oblivious viewer. Then we carried on the try different lighting and setups in the same area. (Resulting in the first image I posted on this blog, and this one here:)

Now this blog is running a tad long, so I'm just going to skip ahead to the point and the "Bloopers," if you will. :)

We later went outside and found a nice bench, where I placed my flash behind to light up the bush, toyed with reflectors and different angles. Any lighting coming from the left of the image is from my flash, anything coming from the right is from the sun.

Now for some.... "out takes" ;)