Pensive

I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything in a long time.  This Project 365 is harder than I expected.  And being really busy with work and other activities doesn’t help much.

Last Friday, I got to take some portraits for a friend who is a talented dancer and actor.  She’s working on a play that is being done in April and needed some photos for the playbill.  After we did the standard headshots for the program, we started playing around with some silly poses.  This was one of them and it just cracks me up.  It’s fun working with actors and dancers because they are so easy to pose and are comfortable doing silly things in front of people.

We were talking about how the famous photographers from the 30’s and 40’s made some really amazing portraits of the actors and actresses in Hollywood.  The standard pose was to have the eyeline looking out of the frame and not looking into the camera.  They also had really hard shadows with soft lighting.  I think that they also use the fresnel lenses on the lights they used for the portrait which gives you a much different kind of light than what we have today with our strobes and flashes.

I still have a few of Linda’s images to finish, but this one was so much fun, I had to put it up for the blog.

Cocktail Time

It’s bonus day. Two postings in one day. So, if you read my earlier posting, I’ve been up since 4am and I’m starting to burn out a little bit. But…. Ian and I were trying out some new cocktail recipes.  We saw a website for vintage cocktails and he had purchased the ingredients for these martini’s: The Fitzgerald, the Aviator, and the Casino.  I’d tried the Fitzgerald over the weekend and loved it.  Today we made the Casino, and it was pretty good.

I love the name of the gin he got: Death’s Door.  It’s a boutique distillery in Wisconsin and it’s pretty good.  He also got some orange bitters and créme di violetta and maraschino liqueur.

I was also trying out a new lighting technique using a boom arm with my studio strobe. I was able to bring the strobe over the items and light them in more of a glamor style.  I kept the power down very low so that I got some backlighting from the window behind.

Dublin Scioto Prom 2009

Dublin Scioto Prom 2009
Originally uploaded by Elessar

My little girl is growing up. I’ve tried to stop her from doing this, but no matter what I do, she continues her journey toward adulthood. This image was from her senior prom.

Fiona has been dating Jake for about 5 months now and they seem well suited to one another. He’s patient and forgiving (much needed with the often mercurial Fiona). She’s passionate and expects to be pampered (I don’t know where she got that from!).

The night was very special–my little girl is all gown up and ready to graduate from high school. How did I let that happen?

I’ve taken my share of shitty dance pictures, but I think I’m finally getting it right. I used two lights for this set up: one to camera left ( my new ab800) and a second light to camera right (my SB-26). Both were through white umbrellas to diffuse the light.