I’m working on a series of creative fine art photo shoots where I’m keeping gear very simple and just concentrating on doing more with less and shooting in different types of environments. This was a recent photo shoot I did with my good friend and model, Hazel, in a small studio space in Visalia, CA. It had been a while since I shot in a studio setting, and I was feeling a little apprehensive, but once I set up the lights and started working with Hazel, everything went fine. Katie is a wonderful local model and I enjoy working with her. She makes my job easy!
I kept everything quite simple. For camera gear, I used a Nikon D700 with a Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8G Lens. In the studio, I used a simple molted brown muslin background; and for lights, a pair of Dynalite UNI400-JR Monolights with a strip dome soft box on one and a snoot with a 20° grid on the other. For a long time, I have been looking at new lights and studio gear. There is so much great new gear out there today, but in all honesty, all you need is good quality lights. The Dynalite UNI400-JR Monolights are getting up there in age, but they still work great.
The shoot went wonderful not only because Hazel is great to work with, but using just a 50mm lens in the studio made me work on my composition more due to the limited space in the studio. A zoom lens is great to use, but using a standard 50mm forced me to interact with Hazel more on composing some of the shots. Interaction between photographer and model between photographer and modelis very important in this type of photography to produce great shots. This was our fourth shoot together and we really work great as a team and the photos showed it. In an age of texting, taking selfies and living your life out on social media, I believe our culture is losing how to interact in person with each other.
All the images were shot in RAW with the Nikon D700, and brought into Adobe Lightroom where I turned them into B&W. There is virtually no editing done to the images at all.
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