Corn, Oklahoma

I love meeting new, interesting people like Gary Reimer of Corn, Oklahoma. When a client calls and needs images, I always look forward to these kinds of shoots.

The inherent challenge of this type of assignment is that:

1. You don't have any time to scout;

2. The people (namely farmers and ranchers) are extremely busy;

3. You have to shoot environmental portraits as well as supporting imagery to fill in the pages of, in this case, a magazine article.

4. You have to do all of this very fast...

So with that in mind, I traveled to Corn, Oklahoma to shoot these images.

When I got there I didn't have to work that hard for locations. Gary's farm was nice and tidy and with recent rains, the landscape looked great.

So in just a few hours, we have to tell what Gary does in order to illustrate an article.

Here we did the various shots of his operation as well as shot some nice portraits with various backgrounds. Since light tells a story all in itself, we did a variety of poses from lighting him with natural side lighting, used a reflector to bounce light back into his face and backlit him with the sun, and then at the end, we used a simple two flash set-up to light him against a dark sky.

The last protrait was a pretty simple set-up (see diagram). In essence it was a three point system (the bright sky, flash one, and flash two). Of course one flash was used to light Gary while the other was placed just above the milo and spilled across the grain heads. Pretty simple and it took just a couple of minutes to set up.

In the end, I think I should have spilled some more light over to the camera left. However, it was getting dark fast, the other flash was at the truck and it was a long way through the milo.

Shooting Produce

You know, I have never shot any produce images before. In fact, I am not much of a food shooter as it is such an exacting art, I've never chosen to try and tackle such a demanding discipline.

However, on a recent magazine photo shoot, produce was part of what I had to shoot. The day I shot these images was overcast and the sun was filtered through a cloud bank that acted as a hug soft box.

That light was filtered indirectly through the openings in the produce stand which made it soft and turned the colors super-saturated.

Curiously, all of the food was shot how I found it. No artificial lighting or reflectors - just glorious filtered, indirect light.

Case Study - Andrews Rodeo Company

Last Saturday I did a magazine shoot of the Andrew Rodeo Company at Addielou, Texas. While it was rainy and nasty, that didn't set me back too bad. In fact, the overcast day made for some great saturated colors.

The tough part was taking the portrait of the Andrews. Since Bodacious was an integral part of the Andrews Rodeo Company's identity, I felt like it was important to feature a small shrine they had to the bull in their back room.

While space was tight, that wasn't the biggest problem as I kept getting a "hot spot" on the cut out of the bull. To mitigate the spot, I used a dual flash set up. the main light was at camera right and shot through an umbrella and the second light was bounced off a silver reflector to add soft, even lighting - thus eliminating the "hot spot."

Case Study - The Boydston's

Here's a new section to the blog - The Case Study.

Periodically, I'll post an assignment and articulate how the shoot was accomplished in an attempt to educate and stimulate discussion about the images.

In this very first case study, I was assigned to photograph and write a magazine article about a couple who are ardent conservationists and was recently awarded a statewide honor for their work.

The turn around had to be quick. I was in town for a week and the deadline for the images and article were the end of June. So in mid-June I headed to Olney, Texas for a morning visit, an interview, and photo shoot. I had just a few hours to bring everything together.

On the way down, I was concerned that with our late start (8:00am) the "good light" would fade quick because between introductions, exchanging pleasantries, and scouting a location, it would be mid-morning before we were afield.

However, on this morning luck was on my side as a thunderstorm brewed just to the east of their ranch and left the sky in a deep overcast.

It was 10:30 before I shot the lead photo for the story: a simple portrait of the Boydston's. The lack of shadows and soft light made for a good shots of the cattle, plants, and the ponds, I needed to punch a little bit more color into the portrait.

Here's where a some extra gear came in handy.

To add some color to the uninteresting sky, I added a graduated neutral density filter in tobacco color. To add some color to the Boydston's, the Canon wireless flash system came in handy.

I placed a single flash placed on a stand to the camera left and manually opened the flash to throw a 24mm pattern. I then shot the flash on TTL with an initial exposure based ambient light exposure. I then subtracted a bit of light from the flash just to give a punch of color.

This image was shot with a Canon 1D Mark III camera, a Canon 16mm-35mm lens set at 19mm. The composition was shot loose enough to allow an article title and lead text yet still be strong enough to stand alone if no text is laid upon the image.

Manually exposed at 1/160 @ f10 ISO 100, Flash set at -1/3 stop