Elena and Vanessa Photoshoot

 Vanessa (left) & Elena (right)

This one is a few months old.  The photos were taken back on Oct 31st.  The photo shoot was themed on the 60's as I had acquired a Voigtlander Bessamatic SLR camera.  I felt inspired to do a retro fashion style shoot, and arranged a team to get it done.  Nicole Hogan was the camera assistant, Ashley Hogan was the make up artist for Elena Bianca, and Leah Wilburn did the wardrobe and the makeup for Vanessa Lever.

Find the full set here at my flickr!


The photo shoot was supposed to take place early in the morning to catch the dawn light, but we missed it so we ended up with morning light instead.  It created some pretty harsh shadows, but I happened to have multiple flashes ready to blow those shadows away.

For this shoot, I brought out the Canon 7D, canon 50mm 1.8, canon 15-85mm, canon 70-200 f/4L, with the canon 580exII flash.


The above photo was taken with hi-speed flash sync.  It was taken at f/4, 1/2000s, ISO-800.  It was taken with a 50mm 1.8 canon lens.  I picked a high iso to bring out shadows where the flash couldn't reach, or shadows that the flash WOULD create, and the shutter speed was hiked up to 1/2000s to darken the background.

This one was taken with the 70-200 f/4L canon lens.  It's pretty light and much smaller than the 70-200 2.8L that would be used for a runway shoot.  And since it's outdoors, we have plenty of light so wide aperture isn't a big deal.  The photo was taken at f/11 and 1/250s at ISO 400 and 70mm.  The flashes were widely separated, and so hi-speed flash sync couldn't be used, maxing the sync speed for flash at 1/250s.  So the aperture was set at f/11, outside of the lens' sweet spot (find out your lens' sweet spot at photozone) for sharpness.  It's okay, because it let me grab more of the background.  Again, the iso was upped to 400 to bring out a little bit of the shadows.

This photo was taken with a camera hot-shoe mounted 580exII flash and a 15-85mm canon lens.  This is actually the sharpest zoom lens I own, and I love it.  Too bad it's only f/3.5-5.6, I use it all the time when I shoot outdoors but... I do most of my work indoors.  Oh well.  (But it DOES have 4 stops of image stabilization, so if I can get people to sit still, I can still take nice photos indoors...)

I was just getting some close ups for the makeup artists, and the setting was f/4.5, 1/1600s, iso 400, at 35mm.  Again, I used the hi-speed flash sync so darken the background, the aperture was sitting at the sweet spot for the lens (again, go to photozone to find out), iso was increased to bring out the shadows.  The aperture was low enough to blur out the background and give a sharp image of the subject.

The best accessory I had for this shoot was a camera assistant.  Having someone to help you... carry your stuff... and set up the lights and hold reflectors and such lets you pay more attention to the actual picture taking.

I'll revisit this shoot again later, with pictures taken by Nicole and the film photos (yes, I did take pictures with the voigtlander).

See the full set (so far) at my flickr!