Here’s another photo from our trip to West Texas. We had just arrived at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in time for one hike. Fortunately, the trail head into this canyon is right at the campground, so we were able to hike a couple of miles out and back before sunset. I played with a number of different versions of this image trying to accentuate the warm glow on the mountains on the right side of the canyon. In the end, though, I left the photo pretty much as it was from the camera.
It’s been a while since I posted a simple, landscape photo. This photo is from our trip to the parks in West Texas. We spent two nights at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in the western corner of Texas, just a few miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico. This particular spot is at the Dog Canyon campgrounds. This isn’t a spot you come across by accident, you have to work at to get here. It’s only about 10 miles as the crow files from the visitor center to Dog Canyon, but we had to drive well over 100 miles to get there. But it was sure worth the trip! We were the only people there. Even the ranger who lives there was gone for the day. I wish we’d had more time to enjoy and explore, but it was time to start for home.
My senior photo packages include a complimentary custom photo composite. A composite is a great way to feature a number of different photos in one frame. Since we did a number of different looks and locations, we had plenty to choose from. In fact, the bigger problem seems to be narrowing the selection down to a manageable number.
Boy, has senior photography changed a lot over the years. In the mid-1970’s, I worked for Rembrandt Studios in Peoria. The studio specialized in school photography, and probably did most of the schools in Central Illinois. As a result, we did lots of seniors. As I recall, we had one scheduled every 15 minutes, and we did the same set of seven poses for each senior. It was basically an assembly line. The closest thing we did to a composite was a double exposure combination of a full face and a profile.
Today’s seniors sure have it better. A senior session typically includes a wide variety of clothing and scene changes. Many are even done in locations that are meaningful to the senior. To top it off, there are lots of options for delivery formats. Composites, slide shows, business cards, albums… the list goes on and on.
It almost makes me wish I were a senior again. (Almost, but not quite.)
Here’s another image from the senior photo session last week. Notice how Laura is framed by the soccer goal behind her, creating a frame within the frame. I also replace the scoreboard using Photoshop so that it reflected the proper school colors and name.
The setup for the photo was pretty similar to the other one. Laura’s father is holding a large collapsible panel to block the harsh sunlight. The main light is from a strobe positioned camera left, creating the loop lighting pattern on Laura’s face. The accent light from camera right is from a second strobe behind Laura to camera right. It creates separation and emulates the natural sun, but is more controllable and far less harsh.
October
The combination of beautiful fall weather and a high school senior photo shoot makes for a great opportunities. This week has been particularly nice, with clear skies, fall rich fall colors and cool nights. I recently did a senior photo session for a gal who plays soccer for Bloomington High School. She wanted a few photos on the soccer field, but her home field is literally just that… an open field. And to make matters worse, it doesn’t have a scoreboard or any identifying signs.
No problem, we simply went to another soccer field, in this case, we used the Pekin High School field in Coal Miner’s Park. The photo below shows one of the frames, pretty much straight out of the camera. You can even see her father holding a collapsible panel to block the harsh sunlight. The light on Laura is coming from camera left from an off-camera strobe.
The problem, of course, is that the scoreboard says “Pekin Dragons” instead of “Bloomington Raiders.” The photo below shows the result of some retouching on the scoreboard. Now it has the Bloomington school name and colors. Notice that the time clock even displays 2011, her class year. The switch-out was made easier since I had taken a picture of just the scoreboard before I moved from my shooting position. That gave me an unobstructed view of the scoreboard so that I could retouch it, and then use it as the master in any of the frames.
If you’re interested in even more, behind-the-scenes Photoshop details, I also posted a tutorial showing how I extracted the BHS logo at the top of the scoreboard. It’s available on YouTube or on my Tutorials page of my main web site.
