Morgan & Kyle

Every aspiring photographer dreams of a day when he/she would be able to control every aspect of a photo shoot – choosing the location, deciding on the pose, the number of photos the client gets, the type of light they use, the outfits of the subjects/models, etc.

I, too, used to find myself saying “If I only had this client” or “If I could only put a limit of three photos per session” or “If I only planned the session ahead”, and many more if’s. Until I decided to stop dreaming and actually do everything that I used to consider excuses for not coming up with my best work. And it worked.

Over the next few days/weeks, I will be posting work that I did for free back in September and October of this year. As to why I did that, there will be a post in the near future that will address that and other questions. Today, however, I am going to write about the first photo shoot I did – a portrait of Kyle and Morgan.

Morgan took one (or two?) piano classes from me when I was teaching at MTSU, so I knew her relatively well. I felt comfortable telling her whether I thought certain details of the shoot were going to work or not, and she was very kind to do pretty much anything I asked her to do. Not to mention that she was one of the best prepared subjects I have ever taken photos of, which was actually quite intimidating. Her fiance, Kyle, was also a dream to work with – he was consistent, kind, and amazingly patient.

Both photos are taken at Morgan’s parent’s house in Murfreesboro. The photo taken in the living room took close to two hours to set up and try various poses and types of lights. The photo with the piano in the background took much less time, as I think that all of us got used to each other and knew better what to do.

I forget exactly whether we intended to have the frozen, almost empty, slightly sterile look in the photos before we took them. I am not sure if it is a resemblance of what was going on in my life, or what was going on in theirs, but the character of the photos (which I really like, by the way), is not a coincidence to me.

I believe that one cannot run from who they are, especially in photography. We, photographers, think that we can mask it, photoshop it, or fake it with gorgeous models. But, at the end of the day, people can read us in our photos just as they can instantly attribute a piece of music that they have never heard before to Bach, Mozart, or Justin Beiber (is this musical blasphemy?). So, the more I think about it, that cold, almost distant look seems to be a somewhat consistent theme throughout the photos that I will be posting – which leads me to think that perhaps it was more of a mirror of my own searchings.

Anyway, back to the photos. While the photo shoot did take a bit more time than Morgan & Kyle were expecting, the post processing took even me by surprise. I ended up spending at least six hours on each photo. Those of you who know Photoshop, will understand this better when I say that I ended up with over 50 layers on each image, most of which were either subtle adjustments of contrast and colors, or in-depth use of cloning/healing tools.

The reason why I am mentioning the amount of time that went into this photo shoot, is because after doing about a dozen photo sessions like this one (‘concept sessions’), I realized that it would be impossible to market them to the regular engaged couple or family, who all they want is a dozen cute photos of themselves for $200-$300. That was the first and most painful lesson that I learned in September. My dreams of quickly building a portfolio made out of concept photos, were shattered quickly.

The difference between this type of photo shoot and the $200 one is in the details. And there are very few people who can afford (or want) to pay for fine work in the details. For example, if you look at the original version of the first photo, you will notice that there was an umbrella stand and a white column visible in the frame. The $200 session pays for cropping the photo so that the umbrella stand is left out, while in this type of photos/processing, I spent three hours taking out the white column and the umbrella stand, and then adding another column of books on the bookshelf, all for the sake of better flow in the composition of the photo.

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So this was my first experience at doing a photo shoot exactly the way I always dreamed of. While, obviously, there are a few things that I would do different, overall I am very pleased with the final result. Thank you Kyle and Morgan!

Technical Stuff: I shot both photos with a Nikon D300, various lighting mods (beautidish, PLM, Umbrella, reflectors, etc.), Nikon SB900 flashes, and either the 50mm f/1.8 or the 35mm f/1.8 lenses. Although I used three flashes at the same time for the majority of the photos that I shot in September, I made it a personal goal to keep the lighting subtle and blend it in with the ambient light as much as possible. Whether that worked or not, I’ll leave it up to you to decide – feel free to voice your opinion in the comments.