The Edmonton Steampunk Group is a vibrant, fun group of people who love to get together and dress up Steampunk style! They have an annual photoshoot every year to help raise funds for their annual ball. This year the shoot was at Fort Edmonton Park. It was a very exciting, fun filled day!
Check out the group on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/groups/edmontonsteampunks/
I was invited to a photoshoot a few weeks ago and met some very wonderful models, among them, Krissy Dewalt-Peters. This was my first photoshoot in over a year (I had started a part time job last May and didn’t have any time or energy for photoshoots). I was NERVOUS! I approached Krissy, introduced myself and told her I am a little nervous and rusty. Krissy gave a big smile and agreed to be my first model. She was so patient, and so easy to shoot that I quickly regained my photographer eye and confidence. What I was most impressed with Krissy is that she really felt comfortable in her own skin and could give me any expression/ look I asked for. She has a playful sex kitten look that really appeals to the camera.
With an experienced model you really don’t have to give her too much direction, just basically give her an idea of what you are envisioning,and she just pulls it off, which is exactly what Krissy did!
When I find a great spot with good lighting, I want to use it as much as possible. This was easily done with a versatile model like Krissy. She stood in front of that window and worked it while I moved around her, getting different angles and shots.
The next set was shot in a tiny little corner behind some bushes.
And this last one is my favorite. I saw these cool bike racks and just really wanted to include them in the shot. I ask Krissy if she can just somehow make this shot sexy. And again she does her magic! Nothing is boring when you have a model like Krissy.
Krissy lives in Edmonton and has been modelling for 3 yrs. If you want to work with an excellent and experienced model, make sure to contact on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BettieBuxom?ref=br_tf
This week I thought I’d show some tips and tricks I used to combine 2 photos to get the final resulting image.
In this photo, the sun was too bright and I didn’t like how the model’s leg was positioned. My good friend Laurice suggested holding up a scrim to filter out the bright sunlight. In Photoshop Elements, I added both photos to the photo bin. I opened the first photo, chose the “clone” tool and alt + clicked on the line of trees. I then opened up photo #2 and simply cloned Laurice out. So easy!
With special thanks to Laurice Block. Laurice is a great teacher and photographer! Check out his work on Flikr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lblock/
We sure had fun shooting these models! They created their own “haute couture” designer dresses made from garbage bags then bravely and confidently showed them off.
With special thanks to:
Venita for organizing the models and helped them create the fabolous dresses
Steven for helping us find the perfect location for the shoot
Raveena, who was one of the models and the MUA. She did such a great job on the makeup! Make sure to check out her makeup blog: http://raveenasbeautydiary.blogspot.ca/
Once again Ms Lynda Olsen of Olsen Art organized another exciting meetup opportunity for the Edmonton ShutterBugs. We got a private viewing of the High Level Streetcar before it opened to the public on a beautiful Saturday morning. Then we had a chance to ride it across the bridge. It was a very memorable meetup!
With special thanks to :
Garry Burt, Maria Nykiforuk, Hans Ryffel and Hugh Mckay of the Edmonton Radial Rail Society
Lynda Olsen of Olsen Art
I was lucky enough to be invited by my good friend, Lynda Olsen (Olsen Art, based in Vegreville) to participate in a fun and casual shoot off Whyte Ave. Another photographer friend of ours, Rick Watts (Polished Pixel) knew of this amazing location with all this cool graffiti walls and back alleys.
We would take turns directing the models. I have to say we had the best models to work with that day. They were all so patient, friendly and outgoing. Really great fun folks to shoot. The photographers I shot with- Lynda and Soren Olsen, as well as Rick Watts were so laid back and easy going, ready to offer advice and help. I especially loved watching Lynda in action. She was so creative and efficient with posing the model that I stole some of her shots but she never cared, even encouraged it.
What I learned from this experience: I had not done a model shoot in almost a year and at first felt really rusty and nervous. I had a slow start in posing the models and trying to think of what shots to take. So what I did was stand back a little and just watched what the other photographers were doing, chatted with the models a bit, grabbed the first model I connected with and went from there. Once I felt comfortable with the location and the models (and them with me) I quickly got into the groove and came up with my own shots.
Needless to say, I had one fantastic, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious day!
I had a lot of photos from this shoot but can’t post them all here. Make sure to visit my website at: MoonSky Photography.com to view the rest!
With special thanks to:
Rick Watts of Polished Pixel: http://polishedpixel.smugmug.com
Lynda and Soren Olsen of Olsen Art: http://www.olsenart.ca
She has always been my favorite subject to photograph. I have thousands of pictures of her since she was a baby and yet that never seems enough! I love her smile, and her charisma, her beauty and her charm. She has always been so wise beyond her years.
She used to like getting her photos taken but lately has seemed more self conscious and didn’t like being in front of the camera. I got her to relax in front of the camera by allowing her to have fun and make silly faces, then I caught the smiles in between the silly faces.
My husband bought the 105mm f2.8 micro lens as an early birthday present for me. I’ve been thinking of getting this lens for the last year to play around with macro photography but it’s a pricey lens so I had to think long and hard about it. Luckily, my husband found a Kiijiji ad: someone was selling the lens for $700! He negotiated down to $600 and now I am the proud new owner of one super cool lens, and I won’t feel too bad about it since it cost half of what it’s really worth.
It was a rather cold and windy day so I was only able to talk my son into giving me about 20 test shots after his app’t inside the health centre.
First impressions: it takes a while to auto focus. When shooting an antsy 8 yr old, you need a fast lens. But I sure do like how it blurs out the background at f2.8. Can’t wait to try it out as a macro lens!
Since I don’t have my own studio to shoot in, I have to create my own DIY studio wherever I can find space in my house. I actually quite enjoy this challenge because it makes it takes a lot more resourcefulness, and if I can set up a DIY studio at home, I can do that anywhere else and still get some nice results.
For this this shoot, I set it up in a rather narrow hallway, then shot it from another narrow adjacent hallway. Luckily my son is still little, so he easily fits into the little space. Because it’s a small space, I didn’t fully expand the umbrellas so that there is less light spill.
A few things I learned from this shoot: I set up 2 speedlights with umbrellas by myself for the first time, so I was rather pleased about that! In the fist image I don’t know if I had enough light on his legs, or if it’s ok like that because I didn’t want to darken the background too much, and I kinda like how how the light gradually brightens as it goes up towards his face. In the second image, tried something new: I masked* the blackground black then brought him back in. The top part of his hair was tricky. I would have liked more light there or did a better job of blending it or something. But by then it was almost midnight and I was tired so felt it was good enough lol
* I am still rather new to Elements/ Photoshop so I apologize if I am using the wrong terms! One of these days I will need to sit down and read a manual to learn the proper terms.
Today was my son’s birthday party. Well, TWO parties: one in the morning at Chuck E Cheese with a few of his friends, then a BBQ in the evening with family. I have been practicing with off camera flash for the last year and so I freaked out a bit when I had to use on-camera flash but couldn’t remember the settings! Had to take a few test shots but managed to figure it out- whew!
I found it difficult to shoot indoors because of the low light conditions and because the kids were moving around really fast. But I shot in manual mode and was able to re-adjust my settings fairly quickly. Luckily, I shoot in RAW so I was able to tweak some of the exposures in Elements 12.
The following photos were taken at Chuck E Cheese.
Below were taken at home:
MoonSky Photography 