Lovers

My friends wanted a photograph that was erotic, yet something they could put up in their apartment. They wanted it not to be the typical portrait type shot. I had never photographed a nude couple, let alone two friends. They are also not shy about their excitment, which made it a little uncomfortable for me. But in the end this is the photo that they really liked.

I goof around with the photos a lot in photoshop. Heck, it gives me something to do. For this photo I took the original shot and then duplicated the layer. I changed the mode to soft light and it added a lot of contrast. Next I ran an action called professional retro and went in and played with the saturation. Lastly I ran another action called Midnight Black. I probably couldn't duplicate this again if I tried cause I also played with the curves adjustments for a little while.

Speedlights

Life is tough sometimes. My girlfriend is more than 5,000 miles away and I probably won't see her for at least 6-months. There is a very cute Filipina girl I really want to photograph, but she has other things on her mind. Funny thing is all I want is to photograph her but she made it very clear she wants more. I would normally jump on it (no pun intended), but I'm trying to stick to one girl. So I sit here alone on a Friday night with my cell phone ringing. She just finished her work and I hope she doesn't decide to pop in to see me at the house. After a couple of beers I want to pick up the phone and call her but I know I will regret it in the end. Besides, my girlfriend knows I have kids and accepts that and she is pregnant. I guess that is why the cold shower was invented.

Okay..... This shot was made using two speedlights. The first speedlight is to camera left and slightly above her shooting down. I used a grid on the light to control the fall off. I pointed it at about shoulder blade height. The second speedlight is positioned inside the door to camera right. It is skimming the closet doors and has a red gel attached. Both are triggered with pocket wizards. I had to be careful to watch the light on the girl as when I had the power too high, it was hitting the closet doors and washing our the red gel effect from the other light. Again, get the light in close to control the falloff.

Soft Light

Raining hard tonight and I was once again out all day with the boss. Had a nice dinner but after eating breakfast lunch and dinner (all out) for three nights, I'm looking forward to him going home tommorrow night.

This was a simple one light setup using a grid to control the light. The background is black fabric placed about 10 feet in front of the model. To keep the light from hitting the background, the light was placed very close to the model (the closer the light, the faster the light falloff). Simple portrait and post processing was very minimal (curves adjustment and I ran an action called Kodak Digital Gem Airbrush Professional - allows for some automatic skin smoothing). This plug in costs a little more than $100 but I like the results which require minimal effort.