This week my class and I finished up another module at CDIA – and had a great time in the process! This was Studio Portraits II, a continuation of our last module, aptly named Studio Portraits I. For these classes, we had to bring in people to shoot (I think partially so we didn’t go crazy taking pictures of each other!), and have a full concept for the portrait before we shot it. On nights that we didn’t shoot, we assisted each other with setups, lights, and generally acting like goofballs to keep our visitors entertained while we worked through our lighting.
The first class I was assisting my friend Nick Bliss, who brought in his friend Spencer. Spencer is finishing up the film program at CDIA, and is also quite the musician. Although I wasn’t shooting, I grabbed these two shots towards the end of the night:
My first guest was my brother in law, Rick. I wanted to use really hard light to show a lot of power and strength, since for more than half of the time I’ve known him, he has been over in either Kosovo or Afghanistan, serving the country. Plus, I knew Rick wouldn’t mind me asking him to look tough for a shot!
My sister in law Courtney was there to join in the fun too. I had originally wanted to go for a bright colored shot to show off her bright and bubbly personality, but when Jack, our instructor, told me that Courtney had just the right type of face to work with a type of light I hadn’t worked with in the studio yet, I decided to run with it. We originally went with a stoic face, but that wasn’t really Courtney’s style…
Once we got the lighting down, we decided that it was time to let Courtney bust out her world famous air saxophone!
Next up was my dad – we did a pretty simple lighting setup, but I love these images.
My last model was the fabulous Jenna. I met her at Miss N’s shoot a few months back, and love her! I wanted to do a basic quick portrait with her, but also wanted to do something different, where it looked like she was looking through a window at night. I was really happy with how they came out.
And with that, another module was wrapped up and on to the next!
