Ok since Sabrina, Jeff, and Mark have all posted portraits this week I figured I should jump on the bandwagon and get one online myself. Visit Sabrina and take a look through the last few posts for a great series of people photos that she made during her recent visit to Africa. Jeff got to attend a workshop with Kirk Tuck that I would have loved to go to and came back with some great studio portraits. Mark is adding to his 100 Strangers project both here and abroad with some great street portraits.
Great stuff from all three of my friends and a little unfair as now I want to travel, don’t really care where to but I want to go. The above image was an outdoor shot with a 42″ diffuser held between the sun and Katie, I can’t remember for sure but I may have had an SB 28 cam right for a touch of fill. Few more of the outdoor shoot of Katie over on the flickr site.
Sara who runs the Center Valley Animal Rescue stopped by and needed a quick portrait (ya got 20 min) for her brothers wedding website that didn’t have animals or a motorcycle in it. Up went a black sheet and out came the lights. Beautiful young lady who laughs a lot and puts up with a few of us that tease her unmercifully. She is truly dedicated to saving animals of all kinds and the ranch is there solely to her dedication and hard work. Check out the info on her site at http://centervalleyanimalrescue.org/ . Special lady and doing a special job. Next time we do this I want time to do it the way she deserves, but these do show some of who she is inside.
Set this up and shot about 60 frames in about 20 min on a Sat. they stopped by on the way home from Costco. Simple set-up and shoot. The 85mm is perfect for the space I had and I like the way it works for this kind of portrait. Click the photos to link to flickr where I added the lighting info.
(Sara if you read the first paragraph I will deny writing it)
Katie
Just had to add one more from that shoot.
Been a little busy here and I had another idea all ready to post but decided to save it for after the holidays when it may make a little more sense. So here is a little bit of what all I have been putting in front of the lens.
For Me
Katie
For Katie
Katie
For Me
Early Morning Diner
For work
Homeward Bound Board Members
So that is a little bit of what has been going on around here. Hope you all have a great holiday and as they say more to come soon. For an ongoing update visit the flickr stream now and then at www.flickr.com/rlketcham
Not a lot I feel like adding in words today but I did want to post a little more of the On Black series I am working on.
I was going to write something about digging out of something but seem to have misplaced the thought. What is forefront in my head for several days has been the whole social networking idea and experience. For a fairly short time I have jumped into this whole flickr, blogging, twitter, facebook social media thing, and it has been enlightening in a lot of ways.
Living in the boonies, it is a little difficult to meet other photographers that have the same interests and ambitions. The people I have interacted with online in the social media world have really opened my eyes, taught me a lot and become friends. Bouncing ideas around among creative people is the fastest way I know of to elevate your own vision. There is an energy that is created that I envy when I hear about the folks I follow are in the same place at the same time. Second best is the one that happens when you share those ideas online with others. Not really sure what all I wanted to say here except, thanks to all my friends online for the extra incentive and free flow of ideas and info.
As for digging out, there is a notebook full of ideas that need to be photographed that should take me into the next few years, and it is added to daily. In addition to the photo ideas I am going to add a writing class to my list of things to do this winter, skills that I haven’t used since college have rusted badly. In fact a lot of things have rusted badly………
more later
Edit: the “how I made this image” is in the comments…….
I had the pleasure of shooting a fashion spread for my friend Rosie Itti last week. It is a bit of a departure from my usual work and I am really pleased with the results and the experience. 
Make up and models, hurry up and light, wrangle 7 or so people to get into a shot and make it all work. It was a great day of shooting and the model and people were great. Rosie had settled on a SnowWhite theme for the shoot and to my mind pulled it off with a fine modern feel to it. This was the second of two shoots. The first involved 5 models and styling of 5 looks for a white T-shirt. I may publish some of those later, but really like the results of this one.
I am not really sure what to say about this kind of work other than I really enjoyed it and would love to do some more. Generally what I like to do is more of an editorial shoot or location portrait work so this was a real departure for me. Less to do with telling the persons story, more of the style and clothing.
The Paul Buff PLM with the diffusion fabric really creates some nice light and I will be using it again. So until I get a chance to shoot beautiful models and a full on production like this again we will be returning to the regular scheduled programming and images. And please don’t ask me to define ‘nice light’, I can’t.
More of this and some new over on my flickr stream if you want to take a look.
Call it balance.
B&W and Dave, to offset the photos of Flicka. And yes, he is that intense sometimes. Balance might be the wrong word for this, the composition is a little unbalanced and my eye jumps out to the left and back, something about the look in the eyes brings me back.
Processed the B&W with Nik Silver and used a Film preset that I tweaked a little, I think it was Kodak TMax 100 to get the high contrast and intense feel to go with Dave’s look.
Ad photos of people and their boats but now and then I get to do stuff like this. Great model and person as well as patient, waiting for the sun to get low enough to blind her when she looked that way. Fairly harsh light and all bouncing off of concrete I still like the harder light look that it gives. At some point I really am going to have to break out the modifier’s and soften this stuff up some. Look for more of Flicka, when work permits.
Day 2 on the hard light ideas that we tested out. This time with a patient friend that is the opposite of a pretty girl. Once again I used a VAl with a SB 28 on a monopod with an 8 in snoot pwr was set at variable settings and distances.
I liked the hard light look on Tony as his face is real expressive and he is willing and patient to try out about anything that you can come up with. We moved around town looking for different places to sort of run and gun. Decent backgrounds that could be used again as needed. 
On top of it all I also kept in mind that I wanted to convert some of these into B&W. Lighting with controlled light using a snoot or a grid give a little emphasis on the parts of an image you want to highlight. The next few ideas will be using this same idea only with light modifiers that soften the light and ease into the shadow areas. I want to see how far you can take one light and make it say what you want it to say.
Negative space and light help tell the story you want to tell, drawing the eyes to those places you want to emphasize and moving you through an image. I wish I could explain this a little better, however I never was a good teacher. It becomes something you just see. I had always seen the things that my art teachers talked about but didn’t really know how to put it into words. The first time I saw a real Rembrandt, not a print of one, I was floored at the way light was used. It changed the way I looked at things for ever. For the last 2 years I have been working harder on doing things with light by the book with little side trips to do it ‘my way’. It is a belief of mine that it is only ‘real’ if you have the basics down pat. There is a saying in shooting sports ‘Once is an accident, 3 times is on purpose’. Basics, basics, basics, then once they are easy try something new.
The whole point is to tell a story, convey an idea or change/open a perception. The next few weeks while work is slow the ideas and experiments will begin (subjects willing). As they say More to come……
rlketcham.com
