Saturday, July 2, 2022
Disclaimer: This is not a typical trek that I am blogging about. In fact, this is one of those things that I told myself that I wasn’t going to do here on this website. However, the experience represented so much in my growth as a photographer I felt like it deserved some preservation here in my “diary.” That being said, we won’t be talking about old cars, barns, or mountains for this entry. We will be talking about a very hot afternoon blotting sweat, getting stung by Yellow Jackets, and opening myself up for something else that I said I would never even consider. By the end of this blog entry, even I might be questioning who is this guy with the camera, and what did he do with Greg?
So, there I was minding my own business working on getting some more boudoir test shoots booked when Toni told me that one of her friends had just gotten engaged. Since there had been a number of conversations between them that I was a photographer, the formal request was put in for a simple candid engagement shoot. How could I say no to that? I mean it would be a low-key shoot just capturing a couple and their love for one another. It would be needed experience for me and would add to my portfolio, showcasing a different type of portraiture than I had done in the past. I agreed to do it as long as everyone understood that I was still rather new at this and if I messed it up, it would have no bearing on the upcoming nuptials. Everyone agreed to my conditions, and I was left with the question of what type of shoot were they wanting?
Something that I love for my clients to do is to share their ideas for the perfect shoot which will give ideas for things like location, wardrobe, shot list, and even an editing style. I find these ideas very important as I am planning for a shoot because my tastes and ideas might not be onboard with what they are wanting. Since I don’t have a specific style and workflow through these sessions just yet, I’m open to any ideas. Early on, I was given a blog entry for an engagement shoot that had about 40 or so photos attached. The location was Joshua Tree National Park, which told me two things….Pack my bags, and get ready for an all-expense paid trip out West.
You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that we weren’t going to be traveling to California for the shoot.
I spoke with April at length about the photos that she sent and what she liked about them. What I found out was that she liked the open and airy look to the scenes, and the processing was the modern style that is slightly overexposed with a more uniform color palette which was desaturated a good bit forming a very low contrast look. OK, looking over my body of work, that pretty much is the exact opposite of what I usually shoot. So, to keep score, I was going to be doing a couples engagement shoot (never done one before), in a very low contrast style (that is opposite of what I normally do), in a location that looks like a desert (but still not going to California). I might have bit off more than I can chew here.
Once I confirmed that there were no deserts close by, I learned that she wasn’t so much interested in the location as the overall look of the photos. She mentioned possibly a large field which NC has plenty of. I started thinking about locations and came up with Doughton Park which has the most awesome meadow I’ve even seen that would have been perfect for the shoot. The problem was that was too far away since they were going to be coming from Kernersville. OK, I can adapt to that, and fortunately having spent over 20 years in the area of Kernersville I knew a bit about the area. There were still not many open fields that were available to the public that we could use. Toni had the idea of using Walkertown Park, which got me thinking about parks in general. Walkertown Park was bordered on two sides with main roads which would very likely limit my ability to shoot in different directions for that open feeling. I started looking at the different options in the area and landed on Triad Park right between Guilford and Forsyth Counties. Looking at the satellite view, I could tell that there were several areas that had large open fields surrounded by trees. This would make for a simple background to work with. After confirming that grass and trees would be a suitable replacement for desert sand and cacti, we locked in the location for sometime the weekend of the 4th.
What April was waiting on was the ring to get sized and back to her. She said that it should be in her possession on Saturday, but she was hoping for earlier. We tentatively planned for a Saturday shoot with an alternative of Sunday. That kind of scared me because looking at the weather, there were storm chances both days with Sunday being the highest chances. While this would be great for my normal photography that is dark and moody, I needed to have a completely different look for this shoot and wanted the sun to make an appearance. I was also having to juggle an Advanced Mentorship session that was scheduled for some time during the weekend which was needing some clouds in the sky.
As the week came to a close, I did the mentorship on Friday at Stone Mountain, and April got her ring back that same day. Looking at the weather, there was going to be clear skies in the morning leading to clouds in the afternoon with a 35% chance of thunderstorms. I wanted to get an early start but didn’t want to rush things so I tried to get things scheduled for around 9am when the sun would have been lower, and the temperature would have been better. Unfortunately, April had to work Thursday and Friday, and she needed to rest before the shoot which I totally understand. The last thing I wanted was for her to fall asleep on me during a pose. She countered with meeting at 11am which would put us right at the height of the sun which I knew would be terrible light. Trying to keep in the same timeframe, I asked if we could push it to 2pm which would give us about two hours before the big rain chances started, and the clouds moved in. That worked, and we had our time and location figured out. I spent a good portion of the evening researching things that I needed to be able to think about quickly during the session which is my norm before any portrait shoot right now. I haven’t gotten to that point where I’m fluid just yet, but I’m starting to concentrate on the details now which is a great sign that I’m improving. I also looked into the editing techniques that I would need to produce the image style that she was after.
Saturday morning, I started getting prepared for the shoot and getting paperwork drawn up. I knew that I was likely going to want to feature the photos in my portfolio, but I was also looking at the future of my marketing for portraiture. I’m still not completely decided on how that is going to look, but I know that I will need example photos available which means model releases. It seemed like there just wasn’t enough time to get prepared for this shoot because there was just so much that I wasn’t really sure how I was going to manage. I like being in control of situations and not leaving much up to chance, and quite frankly, I felt like I was going out all Willy Nilly like some toddler with no regard to a plan. I just rolled with it because I had Toni with me for this one and this is the kind of work where she shines. She has the energy for it and is really good at coaching the very candid poses out of people which was what April wanted. I was really happy to have her with me for this one.
This was also going to be the third time I had used my new EOS R5 camera, and the first outside of the studio. I was going to be relying on the Eye AF feature because I knew that a lot of what we were going to be doing during the day was going to be in motion with limited depth of field. I know that without that feature, I would have had to slow everything down and even then, miss the majority of the photos because focus was missed. It was going to be a fun time getting used to my new friend and learning how to use it correctly. I went ahead and selected aperture priority for this because I knew the lighting would be changing quickly and I wanted to have consistency between shots. This allowed me to just worry about the depth of field which was the most important aspect. I knew that my shutter wouldn’t drop below 1/125 which allowed me the ability to hand hold the camera at all times because the ISO would automatically adjust if the light dropped.
Toni and I had gotten there a bit early, and I used that time to go out and scout the location to see what areas might hold the best potential for the photos that I was hoping to get. Just as I had seen in the satellite images, there were different open fields available around the memorial. I found one that had access to a really long open view as well as a trail system with shade. The sun was still very high in the sky, and it was right at 90 degrees which made for a slightly uncomfortable experience. As I walked around, I realized how good the shade felt and I started to look for compositions that could be used from under the shade while still giving an open and airy feeling to the images. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it was close, and I was hoping that I could make it work.
When April and Kevin arrived, Toni and I were as ready as we were going to be. This was the first time I had met Kevin, and I had only talked to April via text up to this point. We got the introductions out of the way, and we got right into that necessary paperwork for the session. Once that was finished, we headed out to the area that I had scouted minutes before. It felt like it was getting hotter and hotter, and I felt really bad for both April and Kevin who were in jeans.
We got started in the open field with some close-up shots of the ring and faces before the sweat started pouring. It was also a chance to get everyone warmed up to each other so that when it came time to direct them it would be a little easier on all of us. The session started out very easy and things started to fall into place. As we found our groove, things started to happen really quickly. Toni and I both worked with April and Kevin to arrive at general poses that felt natural for them and would give us the candid look that they were after. We all powered through the heat and the bright sun to get the best light that we could, all the while I kept saying to myself that this light was much too harsh for what I would normally be wanting to work with. It was however a key part in the final style of the images that I was going to be wanting so I had to trust that it was going to work out for the best. Rule number 1 of being a photographer, never make it seem like you are doubting what you are capturing because it will change the entire flow of the shoot and keep you from getting those really good images. I stayed positive, even though I had a waterfall going down my back with the sweat.
In an attempt to keep the activity level low, I wanted to go for some seated poses to give them a chance to be still and not get as overheated as I was getting. This turned out to be a fun base pose and I got a lot of great photos with them just sitting. I fully committed to my job and rolled around on the ground with them to get the right angles and to get those images that would fit their expectations. For a guy that normally works with a tripod and will shoot 30 frames of the exact same composition, this was a whole new animal for me. I was up and down, moving around them and getting lots of shots capturing moments more than anything else. It was probably like watching the Tasmanian Devil as I darted from here to there.
Normally, sunglasses would not be appropriate for a portrait type shot unless there was a specific reason for them to be used as a prop. In this case, since we were going for candid images, and a less posed look, I decided that for their comfort, the shades made complete sense and went with the environment. I would rather have the shades than squinting eyes and the sun was not yet low enough to put it at their backs. I had a 1-stop diffuser in the truck, but that was going to cause more issues than it would solve as well as forcing Toni to do lots of extra work. On the other hand, Sierra had showed up to visit and lend a hand. She ended up going to get water for everyone which was much more important than what little the diffuser would offer in this situation. I just embraced the harsh light keeping the final product in mind, which was going to be low contrast, low saturation, and overexposed. That formula seemed to be a good fit for the lighting that I was working with, and I just hoped that I had worked out how I was going to deal with it good enough.
After maybe 30 minutes in the sun, we decided to retreat into the shade of the trail which I was all for. We were all getting tired due to the heat, and sweat was causing issues with my wonderful models which were not complaining a bit. In fact, they were both at the same level that I would assume professional models would be. They just flat did what was asked of them and never worried that a flash fire might actually start at any moment. It was a welcome change for all of us to get into the shade while we rested for a bit and drank some water thanks to Sierra. Seeing how much of a difference the shade made, April was willing to shift her vision from the open-air look to a more closed in woodsy appearance. I was very thankful for that, but it came with another big challenge with how to fit this location into the overall theme of the shoot which was anything but woodland. Again, I just rolled with it and decided that I could get the same vibe here as I had done in the field. The chance for better expressions and the reduced need for sunglasses would more than make up for the slight hiccup in style. That was what I told myself, although in the back of my head I was really worried about messing this shoot up in a grand way.
I had read a bit in Scott Kelby’s book about natural light portraiture prior to this shoot as part of my preparation which turned out to be a really helpful bit of knowledge. There were two pages that mentioned sun flare which caught my attention. Flare reduces contrast, and results in overexposure. Essentially, this was the look that I was going for in the entirety of the shoot. In those two pages, I learned how to purposely capture the flare, which was my intention, but the sun was still much too high to make that happen. Now that we were in the woods, it was the second page that hit me as a possible solution to my problem. He goes through how to create this same effect in Lightroom which was a very simple process. At the time, I really didn’t pay much attention to it because I would much rather get it in camera. Well, I was quickly learning that I wasn’t going to be able to get it in camera because of things that were no longer in my control (ie: time of day). Had I pushed it later, the sun would have been in a good position, but then the clouds would have blocked it and created a different set of problems. Now that I was in the woods, there was a lot of shadow to work with and highlights beyond the trees. I saw this as an opportunity to try the Lightroom technique out in order to bring the feel of the session to this closed in area.
I just shot the scenes with little regard to the blowout in the background, only focusing on the exposure of Kevin and April. The photos looked good, but they were missing a key component that I knew I would be adding later… or hoped that I would be able to add in later. As was becoming the theme with this shoot, I just rolled with it and kept the energy level up. April and Kevin were both having a better time in the shade, and we were able to get a lot of really interesting compositions worked out. They had great ideas like having April jump on Kevin’s back which was something that they normally do, as well as doing some spinning of April which made for some nice moments as well. I just loved the moments that I was capturing here in the shade, but really hoped I would be able to pull off the photos that April was envisioning.
We were having a lot of fun there on the trail and I wanted to get a few photos of them walking on the trail together just enjoying their own company. This was where they both excelled. In fact, the two of them were a photographer’s dream. I just gave loose direction, and they went with it putting their own spin on it to make it their own. By this point, I was realizing that they were making it just too easy for me and I was having a blast photographing them. The new camera was working fantastically through all of this. It was familiar enough as the architecture was very similar to the 5D bodies that I have used over the years, so my fingers pretty much knew where to go. The auto focus on this thing was nothing short of amazing as it would pick eyes out very quickly in most of the situations I put it in. I was very fortunate to have been able to get a full complement of lenses for this camera, but there was one that was not available in the RF mount just yet. That was the 35mm which was one that I had planned on using pretty heavily during this session as a storytelling lens. I did have the EF version which I had gotten for the 5DS R a while back and it is a beautiful lens. When getting my R5 kit built, I added in an EF to RF adaptor so that I could use any of my EF glass as needed. I was very pleased that adapted glass worked as flawlessly as the native RF mount glass did. The only real difference is the extra control ring is on the wrong end of the lens so using Exposure Compensation wasn’t as fluid as with the other lenses in my bag. That was such a minor issue considering I was getting used to a whole different kit while doing a shoot that was completely unfamiliar to me, at a tempo that I am not used to. This is one of those times when I will credit gear for really helping with the quality of images that I was producing. I don’t believe that I could have done this shoot, at this pace with the 5DS R, with getting as many sharp images as I was seeming to get. The investment, while monumental, has proven to be completely worth it. I have no doubt that it will pay for itself within the year.
By this point, we were starting to get restless in the woods and the clouds were starting to come in. Hoping that the heat would subside with the bright sunlight, we left our cover of trees for the wide open field once again. We started to look at a different type of pose to get started with out here and it was a chain of events that started with Sierra looking at TikTok (I have no understanding or interest in that platform) and seeing an interesting couples pose which she showed to Toni. Toni then jumped in and started to direct April and Kevin to the pose. Then I started to work the photography end of it and ended up seeing another possibility which I made a few fine adjustments to get to. I’ll have to credit this next photo to Sierra and that stupid TikTok thing, even if I feel like my grandfather talking about these new-fangled phones that allow you to “twixt” another person. Yeah, I’m feeling old and out of date here. Anyway, I loved the idea behind the photo and saw it working with their tattooed arms which just happened to be on the same side that I was shooting from. They made for the most perfect framework around their faces.
This was kind of like how the day had been going up till this point. We would start with an idea and then everyone would have some input which would yield something truly special. I still have to give Kevin and April credit because they were just having a great time despite holding awkward poses like him holding her for a minute or two as I worked around them, or just bending a back to get into that right position. Of course, even in the shade we were all dripping with sweat. In fact, we kept having to move towels from pockets which caused bulges where there shouldn’t be bulges. During all of this, they both looked so relaxed and engaged with each other.
It was around this time that Toni and Sierra retreated back to the deeper shade of the trail to get out of the heat. That left me all alone with our couple. I actually hadn’t known that Toni had left and when last I saw her, she was behind me as I was walking backwards tracking April and Kevin walking toward me. The first attempt at this walking went well, but they were walking at a normal pace, which made me have to double time it backwards. I got them to adjust their speed so that I could walk a little slower and I just told Toni to watch as I was backing up. She had heard me say to stay out of the way, but in my mind, she was going to let me know if I backed into a tree, or traffic. The series of walking shots were going very well, and I was thrilled with what I was capturing right up until the time I ran into my camera bag. Oopsie! It wasn’t a hard hit, but I did kick the side of the bag with the heel of my foot. Fortunately, I love the protection that the Lowepro bag has for my gear, and I knew that everything inside was going to be just fine.
I reset myself and we were off again with some more shots. As I was getting the next one set up, I heard some commotion from the trail where Toni was. I found out that she had been stung by what we later determined was a Yellow Jacket. Yep, right where we had all been for a good bit of time was home to a Yellow Jacket and he had come out to see what was going on. Of course, Toni was wearing a dress which she doesn’t often do, and the Yellow Jacket flew in-between the two layers of material getting trapped and scared. Well, he decided to fight his way out and stung Toni in the upper thigh. There she was hiking her dress up showing about everything much to the horror of Sierra. My thought was that this shoot had just taken an unexpected turn. Anyway, we got Toni taken care of and I was back to the job at hand.
One of shots that I really wanted to take was one that had been sent over on the moodboard post from a few days before. It was kind of like the one that we shot in the woods with April on Kevin’s back, but I wanted to flip it around and have her jump into his arms from the front. We moved over to the shade again for some better light and had them do what they do best. Even after I think an hour and a half of working, they still appeared just as fresh as when we got started. The energy was still just so alive with them. We were all wearing down though as the heat was taking its toll on us. The clouds were rolling in and that was going to reduce my chance for the look that I was after, so it was a good time to call it a day.
I had been keeping a loose look at the frame count through the day and knew that I was over 300 shots at this point. I looked at the image review and saw that I had shot 585 frames during the two hours we were out there. I couldn’t even fathom that number of photos. Toni and I have been to the beach for a solid week, and I haven’t come back with that many photos. Even my studio sessions are 200-300 frames in a longer amount of time. That high number had me confident that I was going to have around 40-50 pictures for them at least which was what I was aiming for. It was all going to be up to the next step which was editing. That was the wild card now because I had shot these images in a way that would work with the editing that I intended on doing. If I couldn’t get the edits done in the style I wanted, I was going to have photos that were going to lack a key quality that I was after.
We all went out to dinner together as a celebration for the engagement and to talk about the shoot. April wanted to make the announcement of the engagement as soon as possible, so she asked if it were possible to get a quick photo edited and to them that evening. She even knew which group of photos she wanted it from. I had no problem doing that for her because it was a special occasion, and I was also looking forward to getting into the next phase of the shoot which was going to be another learning process for me. I also discussed the best way to get the photos to them after I was done editing. At this point Kevin asked how long the turnaround would be. I went with my normal answer of by lunch the following day. His jaw hit the table and he explained that he was expecting something more like a couple of weeks. I did backtrack a bit after I considered the sheer volume of files I was going to have to go through and said that it would probably be by the end of the following day before I had them all done but would upload them as I was finished with each edit. I’ve always prided myself on a quick turnaround for my clients. There was no reason to change that up just because I had 585 images to go through. I knew that I could tackle 30ish images in about six hours or so.
When we finally got home (mind you it was about an hour and a half drive), I had to get a shower because I felt like I had been swimming in my clothes. Once I felt human again, I went downstairs into the studio to crank up the computer. I picked out one of the shots where she was on Kevin’s back which was what she had requested. I also went with one of the early shots that I did with the two hands showcasing the ring. Hey, I figured that if they were making an announcement, I would leave no question as to what was going on. I took these two into the develop module of Lightroom and worked on the hand one first. That was going to be the easiest one to deal with from an editing standpoint. That left me with the photo in the woods. I started to work that one in the way that I had planned to give it the light and airy look that April was after. It just wasn’t working out the way that I had envisioned. The reduced saturation and lower contrast lacked the mood that I wanted to showcase. I went ahead and pulled Scott Kelby’s book out and looked at the page on creating the sun flare in post. I picked the area where it would work and created the effect. When it was all done, it was an element that did help the photo, and it set the mood as being summer and cheery. This went with the expressions and completed the story I was after. For the first time doing this effect, I was pretty happy with it.
I had sent April a screen shot of Lightroom where I had been editing the hand photo and in a matter of minutes April texted me with this response:
“Just wanted you to know I definitely cried looking at that. It’s beautiful.”
It was that reaction that fueled my exhausted self through the first ten or so edits even before I culled the collection of photos down to a workable amount. I think it was something around midnight when I called it a day and went to bed. The next morning, I was up and back in the studio culling the images to see just how many I wanted to go forward with. I ended up with 93 images that I really liked. Looking at the math, that is almost twice my normal hit rate of 10%. I was going to be in trouble with these edits because my last photo session averaged about 13 minutes per photo to edit. I was going to be on these for days if that was the case. I stepped back and considered my options. The edits that I had done last night were on each of the different scenes that we worked. I had a baseline edit set for each venue and that meant that I could just duplicate the base settings to get the starting point for each image. Then it would just be a matter of doing a few local adjustments and maybe tweaking exposure a bit on each image. This really sped up the process as well as giving the entire shoot a uniform appearance that I was after. In quite a few cases, my editing time was less than five minutes per image which really moved things along.
As I was editing through what turned into 85 client images, Toni and April were texting back and forth about the experience. Toni actually got tired of hearing from both of us because I kept saying that I wish I had done better and was grateful that April and Kevin had been such fabulous models for the day. April, on the other hand, was thankful that I had made her look so good in the photos. Toni is convinced that it is an Aquarius thing to get down on yourself, and here she was stuck in the middle of a game of glad someone else was able to make this a success. As they were going back and forth, April sent this text to Toni which made me feel really good about the job that I had done for them.
“But he’s a badass! He can pull it off with any couple. He’s good at what he does!!!!”
All of this was transpiring while I was still editing the photos which let me know that I was on the right track with the editing style. It actually worked out much better than I had anticipated. Somehow, even deep in the shade, I had managed to get that open and cheery atmosphere that April had wanted. Fortunately, this was a very easy style of edit for the most part and once I had that base developing established for each look, the rest of the series would be very quick to work through. Even though it was a quick editing process, I still had about 12 hours or so of sitting in front of the computer going through the images. The resulting 85 were unlike anything I had ever produced before. They were a total collaboration and outside of my comfort zone for capture as well as edit. However, I feel that these are some of my best portraiture photographs yet. It almost felt like cheating though because April and Kevin were just perfect together and fed off of each other’s expressions and actions. Essentially, I just stayed quiet through most of the shoot because after I would give them basic direction, they would just make it their own and do beautifully without any further input.
It was definitely a high that I was on after two full days around this engagement photoshoot. I felt like I could take on any portrait session at this point and I had learned more new tools than I could count through this experience. In the middle of me doing my happy dance that the clients were so happy with the photos, I found myself facing the inevitable trap. What happens after an engagement? Well, most of the time an engagement is followed by a wedding. Me being the shortsighted photographer that I am hadn’t considered that before because I am in no way equipped to handle a wedding and have had a hard and fast rule about avoiding them like COVID. Well, while Toni and April were talking it was pretty well established that I was photographer that had set the bar for photo services which meant that I was at the top of the short list for a wedding photographer. How did I not see that coming?
So, April ends up texting me and popping the question. She assured me that it would be a small gathering and they were wanting me to do the photography. I didn’t shut that down like I would have hours before. I blame it on still being on that post successful shoot high, but I said I would consider it. I’m still considering it, but Toni has pretty much decided for me, I think.
Just a few years ago, doing any type of people pictures would have been a hard no. The thought of doing a wedding was something along the lines of getting elective brain surgery. Now, I am happily doing people pictures and actually starting to market myself in that arena. I’ve added boudoir and fine art nude to the mix, and now it appears as though I’m going to be shooting a wedding. I really wonder what is in this Wilkes County water because I have no idea who the guy is behind the camera anymore.
I hope that you have enjoyed this slightly different trek. If you are still reading, I have to assume that you are potentially interested in doing a session with me. I would love to discuss ideas with you and right now I’m still offering some pretty big discounts for the chance of learning new things. Those days are going to be coming to an end here soon though because I really have to get things in order to let all this new gear pay for itself. Full prices will be just around the corner and after conferring with April on what my services should cost, look for an engagement shoot like this to run around $1200-1500.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming. With weather looking cloudy through most of the week, I’m hoping to get out and do some of my own photography this week. I hope to have a regular blog entry coming up soon, but this one was just too good to pass up because I really think that it represents a milestone in my transition to a portrait photographer.
Until next time…
