Stephanie & Josh

There are two things that make me anxious when I shoot portraits: not being sold on a portrait idea, and worse, not having any idea of what to tell the subjects to do. Sometimes this happens because of my stubbornness, and sometimes because of the lack of preparation on me or my subjects’ part. However, having an idea of what the photos will look like, and being excited about it at the same time, has the same effect on me as large amounts of hot donuts and fresh coffee do. Today’s photo felt like a dozen donuts and a quart of coffee.

If you are stumbling over this blog for the first time, this is the third post that features photos that I took back in September, with the purpose of refreshing/revamping my portfolio and getting rid of the many “if only” type of excuses.

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After I put out my “free photos” announcement on the Made in Murfreesboro website, I got an email from Stephanie, who knew me through some of the MTSU-RUF people that go to church with me. She had also seen some of the album cover work I did for Stephen Gordon, and wanted a few photos of her and her fiance, Josh, that had the same feel/style.

When I asked Stephanie what are some of the things that she and her fiance like to do, she said that they liked the city (Nashville), they enjoyed alleys, coffee, and books. So, we took all of the above and combined them into one photo – I was excited, they were excited, and from randomly stumbling across the alley I envisioned, to finding the ideal size couch in Josh’s pile of ex-roommate-leftovers, everything lined up perfectly for the featured photo, just like a puzzle, and just like I had envisioned it before even meeting Stephanie and Josh.

And with that being said, I don’t think there’s much more to say about the photo itself – you can see a behind-the-scene panorama here. If you look carefully at the bts photo, you’ll see a couple of items that were added later in final photo. That, lots of subtle curves adjustments, and some significant distortion correction, took about 6 hours of continuous processing. Nevertheless, I couldn’t be happier with the result.

Speaking of being happy, I couldn’t thank Stephanie and Josh enough. They were both so patient, and worked so hard to make every aspect of the photo look as real as possible. And if you are wondering what books they are readying, if I remember correctly, Stephanie is reading one of the Harry Potter books, while Josh is staring at a book about some girl named Anna. On the desk you can see Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.

Technical Stuff: Nikon D300 and my 35mm f/1.8 lens at f/8 and 1/20s. I used two Nikon SB900 flashes - one inside the AlienBees 64″ PLM and another one through a cheap, never-again 22″ beauty dish.