by Alex Brown | Mar 15, 2017
Some of my favorites from our COMM316 Idaho Portrait Photoshoot Workshop
Back in January I went with a group of other students taking COMM316 at BYU-Idaho to Sky Mountain Lodge located in Victor, ID for a 4-day photo workshop.
On the third day of our excursion we spent a lot of time working on portraits. Being a photographer in Idaho is somewhat difficult due to the amount of competition we have here, so it’s important to learn various and different lighting techniques that allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition and give us a competitive edge. All of these pictures were taken using various forms of auxiliary lighting – whether it be the Einstein strobes, continuous lights modified with soft boxes or the wonderful speedlights with octobox modifiers.
Helaman in this picture looks like John Mayer. While I can’t remember if he actually played the guitar, I do remember this lighting was AWESOME. This is a great example of the Rembrandt lighting pattern. I love his pose, the direction of the light and the overall environment. This Idaho portrait would be the perfect cover for a country album!
I will say that this pose might seem totally unnatural, but it totally wasn’t! When I got to shoot Emily Birkmeyer’s Idaho portrait, she was doing something with her hands on her head and I absolutely love it. I think the reason why the pose works so well for this picture is the fact that it helps frame her face. In addition I love how only the brightest of colors are located between her hands — her lipstick, eyes, and the yellow in her glasses!
Meet Emily Froelich! She’s an awesome designer and a great photographer! I love all three of these Idaho portraits that I captured of her because her look is timeless and the background is different yet works! When editing Emily’s portraits I focused on evening out the lighting on her skin and sharpening her eyes!
Check out more awesome Idaho portraits by Janae Harker.
by Alex Brown | Mar 15, 2017
No matter what color backdrop you have, find out three simple ways that can make any studio photoshoot fun.
CAROUSEL
As a photographer, freezing motion is one of the easiest and simplest things you can have any model or subject do! First off, Baylie Madyson is a great photographer herself, but she is so photogenic. When freezing motion with a model, it’s important to direct your model to keep a great expression and face throughout the shot. If you think about it, when the model is moving around they are more focused about completing the action or making sure not to knock over anything – instead of their expression. When it came to this shoot, we used a Wescott Spiderlight with a huge 80″ octabox and a diffusor panel and then had a grey backdrop I love shooting on grey backdrops because the complement any work well for any skin tone, most clothing and provide a nice radial gradient behind the model. Plus, it’s awesome to go in Photoshop and adjust the color of blacks!
BUBBLE TROUBLE
I’ve always envied those people who are able to blow bubbles with their bubble gum. I’ve tried so many times but can never seem to ever get it to work. Thankfully Ashley Morin can do that! This is a great and fun way to take a boring studio portrait and make it pop. pun totally intended! According to Ashley, the best type of gum to blow bubbles with was my childhood favorite, Hubba Bubba. Even if you can’t get some Hubba Bubba, any gum should work but you might need to go in photoshop and do a selective color adjustment to increase the pinks like I did with this shot. Another thing that I must stress is to make sure the model maintains a good expression!
THE NATURAL
I love this picture of Jill Weaver because I love how she was herself in front of the camera. I believe we were actually waiting for someone to bring us something, so I was trying to make her laugh (something I love to do with models) and she was just playing around with her necklace. When it comes to portrait photography whatever is closest to the camera will look larger. When I look back at this picture, I love the expression, however, I wish I had her bring her shoulder back just a bit that way it’s in proportion with the rest of her body. THe other thing I absolutely love about this picture is the motion that is in her hair. By instructing her to tilt her head back a little bit her hair becomes something more to this fun studio shoot!
If you want to see some more ideas of fun studio shoots, take a look at this family photoshoot by Townsville Photography Studio.
by Alex Brown | Mar 15, 2017
No matter how much you hate each other, show people that you’re in love with a couples mini session.
I’m going to be flat out honest with you right now: Sam and Emma are not dating. Or married. Not only did I link to their websites to increase SEO interaction, I want you to see their awesome work!
Photographing couples, whether engaged or married, is always a fun task. Whenever I photograph engagements or do couples mini sessions I always start by telling them how I’m different from other photographers in the fact that I dont heavily believe in posing and directing. I think the best photos are those that show natural expressions and capture the goofy moments like this one below. A week or so ago, I actually watched a Lindsay Adler workshop and it was interesting to see how strongly she believes in this similar method – letting people be natural then turning a pose into that.
Just as much as these too love each other (or not), I love shooting couples! If you ever are interested in a full shoot or even a couples mini shoot, feel free to send me a message on my contact page. I would love to hear from you and even more work with you!
by Alex Brown | Mar 11, 2017
How real estate and interior photography can take basic HDR photography to the next step by adding some extra light.
I have always been a fan of real estate and interior design. When nothing else is on TV, you can always count on the beautiful homes and interiors that grace the screen of HGTV for hours of endless entertainment. I work for a realtor and it’s always so exciting when we get the pictures back from a new real estate listing. I love writing descriptions of homes based upon the interior photography that we get and then to see share those photos with others.
Real estate and interior photography is growing in popularity and demand. Not only do houses sell faster when they have professional photographs, they become even more memorable to buyers when the photographs are beyond impressive!
Capturing HDR images, or high-dynamic range is the common standard and practice for real estate, interior, and architectural photography. An HDR image is actually three separate images – one that is lit perfectly, one that has too much light, and one that is dark – that are then combined. By combing the different exposures, you are able to pull out certain details that a single exposure cannot get alone.
Here’s an example of a beautiful residential home that I took early this morning at sunset. The sky had finally cleared in Rexburg, producing this beautiful sunset. In my opinion, this photograph works well for the house because the sunset is memorable, however, it can still be even better.
An example of real estate photography of an exterior residential home with HDR.
I want to focus more on interior photography for this post, because this interior demonstrates this principle of lighting for interior photography so much better than my early morning attempt does. This is a normal HDR image of a section of the clubhouse at Mountain Lofts here in Rexburg, ID. I love the mix of the rustic feel of a mountain ski lodge combined with the luxury and high end finishes of an urban development.
Mike Kelley is an LA based photographer who set forth to figure out the secrets of architectural, real estate and interior design photographers. Mike Kelley has created beautiful images of buildings, houses, real estate listings and architecture around the world and he does so with one simple tool: a speedlight.
Speed lights are so awesome because they are portable and so powerful! Using a speedlight for real estate and interior photography is a lot like compositing an HDR in Photoshop or Lightroom. After opening up each separate photograph as a layer, you slowly mask them together until you have your interior or exterior photograph lit. Here’s what my speedlight-only image looked like after I finsihed compositing it.
A composite of 65 different layers that have been masked and blended together. Since I shoot in RAW, the file is about 10.65GB big!
I think this interior photograph with just the flash alone is pretty cool, but it doesn’t show off the space and the interior design! This – using a speedlight – is Mike Kelley’s secret when it comes to shooting real estate and interior photography! But wait… there’s more!
After compositing the separate flash images together, bring in the HDR image and you get an amazingly beautiful result like this! By compositing an HDR image and a flash composite, real estate and interior photography comes to life because of the depth that is created from the shadows by the speedlight.
Check out more amazing real estate and interior photographs by Mike Kelley on his website.
by Alex Brown | Mar 11, 2017
Whether you Airbnb, VBRO, or Homeaway, professional photographs can transform your property’s listing and increase occupancy.
Whenever I travel, I typically stay in hotels. Recently, I discovered the new craze when it comes to vacation rentals through sites like Airbnb and VBRO. I love real estate, interior design and architectural photography. Recently I discovered that this field isn’t really saturated with photographers so I decided to get some practice and build my portfolio in this area.
I started searching out through the various apps. In one case, one homeowner saw an increase of 39% in rentals after he had professional photographs taken. With this apart of my pitch, I reached out to a number of hosts on Airbnb and was able to get a few vacation rental photography shoots lined up.
Jacie and Justin were warm enough to let me into their beautiful vacation rental in Driggs, ID. Jacie designed and decorated the home. I fell in love with this home because of all the natural light that flooded the open concept floor plan. Here are some pictures of the outside of their property.
When taking exterior pictures for vacation rentals or real estate listing photography you need to make sure you keep them plain and simple, highlight the curb appeal and make sure all the lines are straight. It’s a bit hard to do the second one when you’re in the middle of winter.
Exterior Detail
It’s important to note that these photographs are going to sell this listing to potential vacation renters or even those who are going to buy the home. I wanted to get a shot of the house with its most prominent selling feature… the view of the Tetons!
View of the Tetons from the front door
Also, don’t forget to detail shots. I love the repetition of the vertical lines that this house has. Combined with the muted blacks, I wanted to showcase the contrast of the modern nickel handlebar.
Beautiful Front Door
To read more about vacation rental photography check out this article.
