portrait

FLZ Jacqui Daniels Makeup: Lightroom Timelapse

A year ago I did a shoot where I helped my friend Jacqui Daniels Get started on her makeup portfolio with a shoot where she introduced me to Feliz. The shoot was themed to be a very high fashion glam look. It featured a lot of gold and so for the edit I wanted that gold look to shine through so that became a main focus of the editing process. Balancing out colors is always a challenge but what I always find works best for portraiture is to lower the saturation by at least 30 and that counters anything drastic that you do with contrast or the white balance. Other than some basic retouching and softening on the skin all the photos really came together

To check out Jacqui’s makeup go to https://www.facebook.com/makeupbyjacquidaniels/?fref=ts

You can see more photos of Feliz on instagram at https://instagram.com/flzmrtnz

Emilie in the Snow

Virginia just got it’s first snow of the year just in time for me and Emilie to have settled in after moving out to Northern Virginia. We got about and inch and a half of snow and it’s a site that is so rare in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I am from. We manage to get out right as the snow was calming down but flakes were still falling. It added an element to the photos that is incredibly unique and the help create interest as out of focus element. Bellow is a time lapse of my editing process which you can see I only use a light amount of retouching and most of the focus is on getting the contrast and color right where I like it. For this shoot I ended up cheating a little bit on the magenta side simply because i felt like sit fit the mood better especially because it looked like the white balance I shot in was cheating toward the Green side.

Getting back into the swing of Modeling with Crystal Sedillo

Sometimes we get away from doing certain hobbies or activities for one reason or another. Heavy work scheduled, lack of motivation/inspiration and sometimes just lack of opportunity all contribute to this. In Crystal Sedillo’s case having a Kid is a pretty legit excuse to getting away from modeling for a little while. I’ve known Crystal for years now and her husband Orlando has done a lot of my tattoo work so when she wanted to get back into modeling I reached out to help get her back into the swing of it. Crystal brings with her a list of Features that compliment my style of photography specifically her tattoo work and her Alt Model Style. Those things works well with the way I like to process my photos, especially the way I use contrast and colors it allow all of her tattoos to really pop. Over all I really loved this shoot and I hope that  I get to work with Crystal again on something a bit more high concept in the future.

Maxine’s Curves.

Anything can and will go wrong on a shoot, it happens and it happens to the best of us. On a recent shoot with Maxine things “went wrong” in that we couldn’t find the intended location, the area we were in had terrible weather and we were losing light pretty fast. When things like this happen it’s important to keep the spirit up and roll with the punches. With the initial idea being scrapped we drove down to Old Town Albuquerque to try and make up for a shoot that didn’t happen and the results were well worth it.

In the car ride (that got extended) Maxine, my assistant/girlfriend, and I had conversations about shooting women with curves (as Maxine obviously does) and how to get the best images out of it and we specifically talked about how it’s not hard to get great images with curvy models. Essentially when working with curvier models you don’t want to hide the curves, you want to highlight them and use them to your advantage. Curves can be incredibly flattering and work very well aesthetically but in order for get them to work you need to know how to pose the model. Posing is important for any model, it’s the basis of modeling in general and every model is different in what works but I’ve noticed that curvier models are very specific. You need to know where their curves are, where they look the most flattering and extend those areas out so that they get more of the attention than anything else.

Shooting curvier models is a lot of fun. It’s not nearly as challenging as you would think it would be and to be honest is more visually interesting to look at. If you want to get better at directing and posing I would recommend working with more models with curve because it makes you more attentive to what you are doing with your directions.

Short and Sweet with Sam.

There are a couple of things that I take pride in as a photographer. One of those things is just always doing constantly solid work but there are a lot of other qualities that my clients and model friends appreciate when I work with them. Those would be my fast turn around times on edits and the fact that my shoots don’t last to long. On average a shoot with me probably only last about 30 minutes. In that time we’ll take well over 100 images and when I get into editing around 20-30 will make the culling but and then only a hand full of those will be posted, that’s just standard. This recent shoot that  I did with Samantha was just that where, we met we shot, we got some solid stuff, I took it home to edit and that all took just about 3 hours in total work time (not including travel time too and from location.) Doing great work doesn’t have to take weeks to do. Simple locations, poses, edits and good work flow can offer a lot to making great images on a short time table and it always impresses people when you can do great work so quickly.

The Versatility of Delina

 

In the words of a great american poet “today was a good day.” At least that’s how yesterday felt. Afternoon class was canceled, I huge load of pressure was taken off of me and I got an impromptu opportunity to shoot with Delina Ellise. It’s hard not to be pleased with how yesterday turned out. Recently Delina had a recent change to her hair style that has resulted in her being able to change her look at a moments notice. It also gave me a chance to play with things in my studio space such as the giant window that acts as a big soft light source which is amazing things for portraits.It’s also just really fun to have a shoot where you and the model are just messing around and hoping that it works out as opposed to trying really hard to make the images come out a certain way. Shoots always turn out best when they are fun and don’t feel like work.