Senior high school photo shoot: Justin

Lee Ann's grandson Justin is graduating next spring, and he and his mother asked me to shoot his outdoor senior high school shots recently. They pushed the timing of the shoot almost as late into the year as my niece Erin's family did two years ago, but fortunately, we found a day and time on Nov. 3 to squeeze in a late-afternoon session in Garfield Park in Indianapolis.

Unfortunately, Justin, who lives in Fishers, couldn't get to the park until after school that day, a Tuesday, so we started later than I would have liked. Darkness sets in much earlier these days since clocks rolled back for standard time earlier this month, so we tried to work quickly.

We got pictures of Justin and his girlfriend, Rae, in a dozen or so poses while we had good daylight. A few were taken inside the pagoda, others outside the amphitheater to exploit the brick facade, a few along the jagged stone staircase south of the arts center and several leaning against a tree and a light pole. (I did not attempt to get permission from Rae or her parents to use any of the photos with her in them for this post, which is why you don't see any of her here).

When it became too dark to get decent background into the photos, Justin, an artsy guy, asked me to shoot some pictures of him in available light -- without flash. I didn't bring along my tripod, so I boosted the ISO to very high levels (2500 and beyond) so I could continue hand-holding the camera. I figured that if it was an artsy, "different" look he was interested in, he might not mind the noise from high ISO levels. We were near the amphitheater at the time, so all of those photos were near that facility. Justin seemed pleased with those shots, which for the most part were cast against dark backgrounds of minimal natural light and illuminated by the park's tungsten pole lamps. Such lighting brings harsh facial light contrasts that photographers ordinarily wouldn't seek, but Justin wanted that mood, that look.

As it turned out, I took several of those shots using shutter speeds too slow (e.g., 1/25) for hand-holding a camera without a lens equipped with built-in stabilization. Some of those shots had to be discarded, requiring a reshoot with higher ISOs and faster shutter speeds. A few of the picture with slow shutter speeds, however, amazingly, actually turned out OK. A special nod of thanks to Lee Anne, an experienced studio portrait photographer, who gets the credit for posing her grandson.

The photo leading off the post was taken inside the pagoda with camera settings of f/2, 1/180 and ISO 200. Right after that shot, we took another with the same camera settings -- this time with Justin smiling. That shot is the first below.

Photo geek stuff: For the entire shoot, I used my Canon 6D and Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens, which I've turned to recently for all of my portraiture-related shoots to exploit that fast aperture and bokeh. For the majority of the shoot, I also used an on-camera flash, Canon 580EX II, in manual mode set at 80mm w/light intensities of 1/32 to 1/8, depending on the stage of natural light availability, to highlight the subject. The flash was equipped with a white Graslon Insight (flat) diffuser. I made a point to shoot most of the photos at or around f/2.0 or f/2.4, adjusting my ISO (which usually was in the vicinity of 160) to compensate for any needed light, which wasn't an issue until darkness set in. In the darkness, I boosted ISO levels to in the range of 2500 to 10,000. In post-processing, the subject's facial features were enhanced in Portrait Professional Studio software, version 11. 

SHOTS TAKEN WITH FLASH BEFORE DARKNESS

SHOTS TAKEN WITH AVAILABLE LIGHT

Senior high school photos: Erin Dean

Late last summer, my brother- and sister-in-law in western Illinois dropped me a line to ask if I would handle the senior high school graduation photos for my niece, Erin. Their family drives to Indianapolis to spend Thanksgiving with us every year, so they were thinking we could do the shoot when they were in town for that.

I was looking forward to the opportunity; I figured I would try to get the majority of my shots outdoors to exploit the natural light there, so I spent the next couple weeks scouting places in nearby Garfield Park for possible backdrops. Normally, weather in Central Indiana in late November is pretty mild -- 40 and sometimes even 50 degrees on the average for highs. I figured our chances to luck out and get great outdoors shots would be pretty good.

A week or so before their visit, the thing I had been fearing happened: The long-range forecast told of frigid air coming through on Nov. 27, the day before the holiday and the day we set aside for the shoot. There was even a bit of snow in the forecast.

To keep this story short, I lined up access to an indoor facility near Downtown Indy to use either for all the shots, in a worst-case scenario, or as an additional backdrop if we couldn't do much outdoors.

The weather on the 27th turned out to be as cold as the forecasters had predicted -- the warmest it got was 29 degrees, and there were light snowflakes falling in the early afternoon when we set out for Garfield Park. On the plus side, there was some sunshine mixed in with periods of cloud cover, so we'd have some interesting light play to exploit.

Mindful of how condensation would form on a camera when coming indoors from sub-freezing temperatures outside, and knowing we wouldn't have time to wait for the gear to warm up between the end of the outdoor shoot and the start of the indoor shoot, I decided to use my older Canon 7D, equipped with an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens, for the outdoor shoots. While in the park, I left my 6D -- equipped with an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens -- indoors then retrieved it before the commute downtown to the indoor facility, where I used the 6D to exploit its superior ISO light sensitivity feature. A few of the outdoor shots also included light flash fill; I used flash with a Graslon dome diffuser for indoor shots, although very few of those made the final cut.

Erin was a trooper for the outdoor photos. She withstood the biting cold posed in in a sweater and jeans. She would throw on a coat as we moved between locales, or on longer moves within the park, she'd dart into her parents' warm mini-van until we were ready to trip the shutter again. For fun on a couple pictures, we had her keep on her knit mittens.

We were outdoors for a little over an hour; we couldn't start much later to hope for a lower sun in the sky because there wouldn't be enough time to do what we wanted to do indoors, as the facility closed at 4:30. We didn't get to all of the spots I'd hoped to use in the park, but we did get to a lot of them. At around 2:15 p.m., we headed to the downtown area to finish the shoot indoors. Erin changed outfits there, and we spent the next two hours finishing the shoot.

These are the results of that shoot.

Above: Erin picked up photography several years ago then gravitated toward making short films, using a Flip camera. We decided to integrate the gear into a couple of the images. 

Above: In an attempt at a "fun" shot, I asked Erin to flip the head/ear band warmer she'd brought along, a sort of defiant gesture toward the cold that afternoon. I liked the result, and you can see a few of the snowflakes juxtaposed on her dark jeans. 

Above: In a nod to the cold, I applied a slight infrared texture to this shot of Erin walking toward me.

Above and next two below: White balance and color variations of some shots of Erin standing, using window light for our illumination. The second one below reflects an archival framing I pulled from my filter options in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.