Lena was looking to both build her portfolio a little along with simply getting some personal shots, so this gave me a little bit of freedom from simply doing full studio style shots to get some semi-creative ones (hopefully). Having done some modeling before, she was very easy to work with. She not only was able to pose well, but also had no shortage of her own ideas to incorporate into the shoot. Having worked with some more novice models in the past, it was a nice change to work with someone a bit more expressive and creative. We were shooting in the early afternoon, so the overcast skies were somewhat welcomed because her hair and eyes popped a bit more, it seemed to make an interesting combination. The rest of the time we were indoors and shooting with studio lights.

There was one interesting photo which I took that was based off of an accident initially which was the first one you’ll see below. With the strobes, the shutter speed is typically 1/60th of a second and I normally shoot at around aperture f/5.6 or f/8 which works fine when you have a nice big flash going off. However when no flash goes off, the shutter speed will become much longer in a more or less dark room. With my camera in aperture priority mode at f/8 I forgot to turn on my control unit for the strobes and the camera automatically slowed down the shutter speed causing a sort of ghost like image (images made like this are often referred to as ‘shutter drag’). So after mumbling a swear or two I reached down to turn on the controller so that next time the strobes would fire…as I did, I noticed a neat looking image with a ghost like effect. So I quickly raised the camera back up and did the shot one more time, this time intentionally…and came up with the below image. Let me know what you think, feel free to leave comments!

You can see all of Lena’s shots HERE!!!