Month: September 2013

Summer work with Ashley Graham

bill Leave a comment

I live only a few hours from Atlanta, close enough I’ve been there and back in the same day more than once. For some reason I rarely go to Atlanta with time to get much photography in. I did work in a shoot that I realize I’ve not posted anything from, which I will correct soon, back in the winter for the first time in a few years. During the summer I had a longer trip to Atlanta and worked in a shoot with Ashley Graham before leaving the city.

I first worked with her on a waterfall shoot a few years ago, and I always enjoy working with her. She’s an amazing model to work with and very good at taking a pose and working with little direction. Some work from the shoot below.

Ashley Graham

Ashley Graham

Ashley Graham

Want to see more from this shoot including some more risqué work. Two galleries can be found on Uncovered Visions here and here.

First of Fall

bill Leave a comment

I’ve long considered fall my favorite season and today marks the start of the latest version. September is a pretty quiet month for me shooting, but I’ve kept myself busy with some other photography projects, one of which I’ll have more about around the first of October.

The calendar doesn’t directly affect the weather, but today the first day of fall really does feel like it. I took a long hike this morning in the woods for a few hours not seeing another human soul the whole time. The squirrels scamper around gathering nuts and the mostly eaten remnants of walnuts litter the trails. The first hints of color show in a few trees and the first pioneers of the leaves to soon cover the ground have arrived. In a couple weeks I expect to be looking at a wonderful display of color that the weather of the year should have set up for us.

I do miss shooting models outside as the weather cools, but on those rare days when temperatures and schedules align the combination of the two can be quite interesting. This year I’ve gotten outdoors for shoots less often than I’d like because of the weather and other interruptions and distractions in life. In fact spring and early summer really were a terrible year for shooting outdoors and August really was my most productive month by a wide margin.

Still I’m looking forward to fall this year. I have a pretty nice schedule of shoots for October planned. Hopefully the weather will cooperate for at least a few of them to get some last outdoor shots before winter sets in. While I’m going to focus on landscape, stars, and non model photography while in Arizona this November, I do expect a few shoots out there with some familiar faces.

A few fall outdoors photos from the archives. First a shot of Adrina Lynn from back in 2010 in weather that really was way too cold to do outdoor nudes. We only worked about a half hour and it was obvious that it was just too cold. It took her quite a while to warm up afterward.

Adrina

Also a shot I love of Melissa Troutt from early October a couple years ago. This shoot was very on the fly and scrambling as our originally planned location didn’t work out and we had to improvise. We wound up trying a nice little spot I need to go back to again some day. Melissa was also still getting over a very nasty case of poison ivy requiring a little extra editing and posing care. We still got some pretty good work that day.

Melissa Troutt

Hannah Perez and Monica Jade – The Falls Three

bill Leave a comment

This actually was the first shoot chronologically in the early part of August. I shot with Bree a few weeks later and Viktoria a few days after that. Hannah always travels with good models and several times I’ve worked with someone for the first time when travelling with her though in this case I’d already worked with Monica for the first time earlier in the year. We planned to meet up near the location for a late morning shoot. In a trend of the month, the weather was threatening calling for about a 50/50 chance of rain even a couple days before. We decided to plan for the shoot to work and hope we got lucky.

Hannah Perez and Monica Jade

We headed up to the location and got there and the weather was pretty cooperative. It was cloudy and the clear threat of rain was there, but not enough to feel we had no chance of getting the shoot completed. We even had a little sun to start, which was an unexpected bonus and curse. We started at the falls. Hannah and Monica work well together, a big advantage of pairing models that know each other before the shoot, and did wonderful work.

Hannah Perez and Monica Jade

We also did the first of the meadow shots and really my favorite work there. The concept here came from talking with the models, the idea is the photographer is a bit of a voyeur coming across the two of them walking together in the woods. It worked nicely.

Hannah Perez and Monica Jade

 

See more from this shoot at Uncovered Visions.

Viktoria at the Falls – The Falls Two

bill Leave a comment

The third shoot of my experiment with working with multiple models at the same location came with Viktoria, a professional trained ballet dancer. This shoot contained an interesting shift taking place only a few days after the shoot with Bree in the same location. I mentioned that I’d driven home from the shoot with Bree in a pretty good rain, but in fact it rained much of the time between the two shoots. In fact Viktoria and I changed plans the morning of the shoot planning to shoot inside because of the threat of weather. Thankfully the forecast improved at the last minute and we were able to go back to our original plan of shooting in this location.

Part of my desire to upgrade cameras late last year came for shoots like this. We were meeting late and in cloudy weather to shoot in deep woods. There’s little chance my previous camera could have handled the ISO needed here and not introduced too much noise. The rain also meant that any attempt to shoot in the falls would be out of the question. The water flow was too high to put anyone into so we focused on the landscape around the falls.

Viktoria

While Viktoria couldn’t get into the falls, it still worked as a nice set to pose her against.

Viktoria

We also did some light painting work late in the shoot in that meadow I mentioned.

Viktoria

Viktoria also posted a few photos from the shoot on her Tumblr.

See more photos from this shoot

The Falls One – With Bree Addams

bill 3 Comments

As I put together my schedule for August I found that I’d be working in western North Carolina a lot that month. That’s not unusual, but I’d worked a lot less there than normal this summer for several reasons. I had the idea to try a bit of an experiment and schedule several shoots to overlap in locations. I had two spots in mind in particular that I wanted to explore the differences I could get in the same spot, but varying the time of day, model, and just the natural evolution of the landscape over the course of a month. The first is a waterfall location that’s a favorite of mine and the second is an open meadow in the same area.

In the end I set up three shoots among four models. The middle of the three shoots took place with Bree Addams. It’s the first time we’ve gotten the chance to work together in a couple years. Enjoyed the chance to work together and love her dedication and willingness to go well beyond to get these shots. The weather was cooperative for the most part. While it drizzled a bit on us, no real rain fell during the shoot. The weather made up for it in my drive back to Tennessee that night in a near steady and at times heavy rain.

First some shots at the falls. Love the nice shaping on the first photo of her.

Bree Addams

I mentioned Bree is willing to put herself out there for the shot right? The water was moving pretty good at the falls and she still got into it for some shots like this one.

Bree Addams

And the meadow? Actually for this photo I’m standing in the meadow shooting back toward her.

Bree-Addams-2013-08-18-20

Want to see more from this shoot? Then check out Uncovered Visions.