Sunday Photoshoot at Mercer Arboretum

Sunday afternoon made up for all the problems of Saturday. Went to a model shoot at Mercer Arboretum with the Houston Photoshoots Meet Up group. The first shoot I attended with Photoshoots was at Mercer about a year and a half ago. It felt good not to be the newbie this time around. I didn’t shoot a lot of the models but I enjoyed working quite a bit with Nicole and her son TJ.   

Cortney Rose is one of the younger models. She's been modeling for the group for over a year as well as doing professional modeling. She's only twelve but a very talented model.

Macie is another of the younger models what has been with the group for a year of so. Her aunt brings her and she always has a number of amazing outfits to shoot.

I didn't meet this new model. I was holding a scrim for a group of photograhers and took the opportunity to grab a few shots. I shot a number of shots using reflectors which seems to be the prefered modifier for most photographers. I didn't like any of them, too artificial. This is actually a combination of scrim with reflector for directional lighting. It's okay but to me the refelctor never looks really natural and most photographers overlight with the reflector--which is the case here. Too much light on the lower part of the face, shadows are overfilled. 

This is another new model named Sydney, I think. She may be a sister to the young girl above. This is using no modifier. Sydney was facing away from the sun so that her face was in shadow. I had to darken the highlights on the hair in post.

I think this was Desiree's second shoot. She modeled at an indoor session several months ago. I told her this would give Tyra Banks a run for her money, but Desiree didn't like the photograph. Everyone else did so it's okay.

This is Nicole or Nick. Being older she doesn't get as much attention as the younger models. This is only her second shoot and my guess is that with the excitement these photographs have generated that she is not going to have to worry about being ignored the next time she show up for a shoot. Nick, TJ, myself and another new photographer wandered off by ourselves and got some pretty good photograph.Okay, so I'm bragging!

The purpose of this shoot was to use scrims and reflectors with natural light. I liked the shadow of her hair so I shot this with direct light.

Here I found a stone archway that provided shadow so no modifiers was needed.

I didn't carry a reflector since I much prefer a scrim if at all possible. So all the shote of Nicole that have used a light modifier are shot using a scrim.

Since I like to work close when photographing people I don't do a lot of distant or full figure shots. But every once in a while if I think I can control the background I will give it a try. Really hacked that I cut off her left hand but no one has mentioned it so far. 

TJ was the only male model that showed up for this shoot. The guys always get ignored. I had gotten a few shots of him at the downtown shoot but there I didn't do any head shots. This is the only one that I got that I was pleased with.