My First Senior Portrait Album

Canon 7D, Raw, EF57-300, 300mm, f/13.0, 1/60, ISO 100

I recently completed my first Senior Portrait album of Whitney, a student at Edison High School here in Huntington Beach. We had a lot of fun doing it and Whitney and her family were all very happy with the results. Be sure to check out the rest of the images here. For this photo, we were under the Huntington Beach Pier. I used my telephoto lens on my tripod. I enjoy using a long lens for portraits. I made a few adjustments in Photoshop so the image would pop a little bit. I am hoping to get some more business for senior portraits. I do believe this is a very good example of my work.

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A Great Headshot

Canon 7D, Raw, 50mm, f/11.0, 1/160/ ISO 1600, Fill Flash

Isn’t this a handsome young man? I took this photo as an assignment for a portrait photography lesson. I think it came out very well. Those gray-blue eyes have flecks of gold and yellow in them. This is my son, Larry. I called him this morning and said I wanted to come over and take some head shots of him that I needed. He said ok. When I got there, he was putting together the baby carriage for his daughter who will be here in a month. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.He  didn’t understand what I was going to do because he said, “I would have shaved!” I said the shot is to show his personality and that is what it is doing. They had just gotten home from the mountains a few hours before and were catching up on some chores at home. I haven’t gotten feedback from him yet.  We used natural light in his living room, but I ended up having to use some fill flash because of the shadows on his face. It evened the light out. I do not think a reflector would have taken care of that – the light was too uneven.

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An Environmental Portrait Part 2

Canon 7D, Raw, 17mm f/2.8, 1/500, 6400 ISO

When I was working on my first photo of Mallory, I got the idea to try something else. She was cooperative and willing to work with me. I wanted to show her in three different areas of her environment. I am happy with the results. The only thing I would do differently is have her doing something else sitting on the couch and me using a different aperture. I should have shot it at f/8 or so. Because of the high ISO with no flash, I needed to get rid of the noise. I put the three images together in Photoshop by changing the blend mode and then using a layer mask I finished it off with a little cropping and a layers adjustment.

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