OCF Self Portrait - Week 3

It wasn't freezing out this week so I decided to try and take advantage of the warmer weather and try to find some Christmas lights outside for this weeks image. Well, turns out downtown San Mateo is pretty weak when it comes to holiday lights. But Jason and I found this tree that was pretty well lit. Two flashes here, key light on camera left and a little rim light directly behind. Next time, I'm making a note to make sure the pose doesn't make it look like I have a big belly. It's the lighting, I swear...

Scott Robert World Tour Los Angeles Revisited

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So, I know its been a while since I was actually at the workshop. But I've maxed out on my laptop's hdd capacity and going through some old stuff when I realized I didn't really look at any of the images I took during our last day in Los Angeles. So here's one that I liked. Below is Angela, she's one of photographers in the workshop and graciously posed for several of us that final day. You can see blog here.

Angela posing in front of the waterfall in flower garden of the Kyoto Grand Hotel in downtown LA.

Same photo, but with a filter effect applied. I just wanted to try it out and kinda like this one

Both side-by-side. Which one do you prefer???

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Off Camera Flash Portraits Project

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In my endeavor to refine my portrait taking, posing, and lighting skills, I've decided to issue myself a project. A weekly project to take a self portrait with different off camera lighting schemes. The first is shown below. I was actually trying to recreate this(posted by D Park Photography), but was not successful. I'll try again...

Week 1

See all images from this project on my Flickr set HERE.

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Break the Boredom

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So lately, I've been feeling pretty complacent with my photography. There just hasn't been anything I've shot that I was eager to get home and post process. Not since the workshop in LA anyways. And I'm eager to practice to try and get better. So I complained to Myron a bit and he and Sherrie were kind enough to offer to model for me. So I rolled over to the East Bay, grabbed some grub, and we just had a lazy little shoot. Some of the new couple and Sherrie's pup, Bean. One thing I know I need to work on is getting my photo subjects comfortable and evoking emotion out of them. Well, they happened to be watching SNL they had DVR'd and so I just had them keep watching TV while I snapped off a few shots. It worked to get them comfortable and just smiling naturally. Then when I realized it was getting late, I set up some strobes in a corner of Sherrie's super cool loft where she has a set of stairs. I LOVE that part or her loft. I don't think I did an adequate job of capturing it this time around. I'll try again later, but for now here's what I've got:

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