Portrait Palooza 2017

Every year for the past couple of years I participated in an event put on by the Wedding and Portrait Society called Portrait Palooza. This event is a contest in where you have 10 minutes to shoot a bride in as many locations around the facility as you can and then you have 48 hours to edit and submit two photos.

The first year I participated I went all out and brought two monolights with softboxes with me and when it was my turn we ran to the location I wanted to shoot and and spent half the time troubleshooting my lights as something decided not to work with the triggers that I had and I was only able to get one shot.

While I was happy with the one image I got I knew that I didn't have a winning image. I was determined that I was going to do better next year.

For last years event I showed up early so I could scout the location and pick out where I wanted to shoot. For lights I decided to bring only one light an Alienbee 800 and a beauty dish. I tested my lights to make sure they worked about 10 times before it was my turn to go. I met my model that I was going to be working with and we started shooting. Since i only got one look last year this year I wanted to get three looks. Since I went through this before I was much calmer this time around and was able to get 4 looks within the 10 minute time limit. This time I was quite happy with the two photos I got and I thought I had a fighting chance at winning or getting an honorable mention.

While I did not win I felt a lot better about the contest and had high hopes going into this years event. 

For lighting I decided to go with just a speedlight with a PLM to make it really simple so I could do the most with the ten minute time limit. I was in the 2nd group to go out and I had my three locations all scouted out. I met my bride and we went out to shoot. We got through the three looks that I wanted but I was not happy with the results. I was missing a lot of things that I should have seen when I normally shoot but since I only had ten minutes I missed most of the posing mistakes that I would normally catch if I had all the time in the world to shoot. The next day I submitted the edited images and waited to hear the results. I found out that my friend Maria had the winning image and I am extremely happy for her as she is an amazing photographer and the image was spectacular. As far as my images I will post them below. I will see you next week.

My first model shoot ever

For this weeks blog post we are going to go back to 2012. I had been doing photography for a couple of years but I was only shooting landscapes and nature shots. For me shooting people was not a thought as I had no idea on how to pose people and I was still just trying to learn photography and I wanted to feel more comfortable with what I was doing. 

I belong to a few meetup groups for photography and I got an invite to do a model shoot with a burlesque dancer named porcelain. So I figured why not step out of my comfort zone and try to learn something new. We met at the studio and spent the first half hour doing introductions and getting to know everyone. When it came for my turn to shoot I explained to her that I had no idea how to pose people and she told me that she will go through a range of poses and I can just fire away.

She made me feel so comfortable and relaxed that after a few minutes of shooting I was throwing out idea's that I had.

She was lying down on this beautiful piece of furniture and I got behind her and asked her to look back to me and I got this shot.

This was my favorite shot of the day and I even had it printed and framed and it is still hanging on my wall at home to this day. Overall I went into this shoot so nervous to shoot people and came out of the shoot feeling so comfortable that I decided to focus more on shooting people.

Well thats going to do it for this weeks post. I hope to release some new work for next weeks post as I took part in a bridal shoot competition and I can't release the images until the judging has been completed. See you all next week.