Photographers

What is a Senior Model?

What is a Senior Model?

⋅ ALL SESSIONS, Fashion, Photographers, Seniors, Teens ⋅

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What is a Senior Model for John Pyle Photography?

Senior Models are rising or current high school seniors chosen to represent our studio for their senior year of high school.

A  Senior Models participates in the following:

-Representing our studio for their senior year of high school, being the face of our business, online and in the community.

-Model for photography workshops that we teach

-Model for commercial and fashion shoots, or photoshoots with other businesses that we  market or partner with.

-Model for new location shoots, portfolio building, or for collaborative projects

-Be featured on prints and canvases at local businesses, boutiques, and locations of advertising or on videos/news/press releases

-Featured on national photography blogs and  articles that we contribute to

-Elligible for national senior portrait modeling contests and additional photoshoots.

-Senior Models agree to ONLY be photographed by our studio their senior year and cannot be featured on websites or other social media pages by any other professional photography studios.  This does NOT include the school/yearbook photographers.  There is NO additional costs or additonal charges on top of your seniors session associated with being a senior model.   Senior Models are required to book “the Identity” or “the Experience” session. 

 

*We love all of our customers and our senior models are very important to us and to our business.

Senior models are considered and chosen based on several factors:

-previous clients we have worked with

-referrals from businesses we market with

-referrals from previous senior models or previous clients

-clients who  love the experience, love fashion, and love being in front of the camera.

ALL those who express interest can be considered.

 

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Off Camera Flash, 2013 Senior Model, Veronica

Off Camera Flash, 2013 Senior Model, Veronica

⋅ ALL SESSIONS, Photographers, Seniors ⋅

I love the perfect marriage of off camera light (OCF) and natural ambient light. I have written previous blog posts (HERE) on utilizing OCF and natural light.

This is another example of why I love light and water! 2013 Senior Model and Cheerleader, Veronica, is beautiful in both pictures but the “pop” of light really adds a nice effect to the water from the fountain. The first picture is natural light coming mostly from camera left later in the day. Nice reflections from buildings and the concrete make it a beautiful shot at 160 of a second and 4.5 with the 70-200mm 2.8 L.

But look at the “electric” difference when a 580exII on a monopod (held by an assistant camera right behind the fountain) is added. The Pocket Wizard flextt5 is used to transmit to the 580exII. Again, Veronica makes both images look amazing…BUT the added “pop” from off camera flash brings a new dimension to the shot.

My quick “mini review” of the Canon5Dmk3

My quick “mini review” of the Canon5Dmk3

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Ive gone from the Canon 20D to the Canon5D to the 5dmk2 and recently made the decision to upgrade to the Canon5dmk3.  Both of my 5Dmk2 shutter lives were over the 150,000 “clicks” from Canon so I used that to justify my upgrade.  I sent in the 5d2 for service as I am going to keep one of them for backup and to second shoot.

I have reviewed things before like the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 v2 lens HERE.  Once again this review doesn’t contain any charts and scientific mathematical optical graphs comparing the  5dmk2 to the 5dmk3.  But I do have real world (for me) tests.

Ive had 5 sessions with the new 5DMK3…here is MY mini review with 5 images (edited in LR and CS6)

1) Focus is light years better than mk2. Canon finally got it right. My 50mm 1.2 that I never use because of poor performance with my mk2 (even after sending it in to Canon to have them calibrate it together) is now spot on. You can pick your focus point with your zoom or primes at IT NAILS IT. Using the dials I can pick the tiny red square where I want it to focus on my portraits and guess what?  It nails it!  No more trying to lock focus at 2.8 or wider then recomposing, zooming in, trying it again, over and over.  Although it is a hard habit to break from 4 years with the 5dmk2s.  But I finally feel confident when the shutter clicks (which is probably how most Nikon users already feel).

2) The camera seems “faster”.The shutter makes a more “confident” sound without being louder… and is quicker. Sounds like a “quiet” machine gun that the other cameras (like Nikon) must sound like when shooting multishot.

3)The screen is gorgeous, bright, and HUGE. The magnification with one press takes you right into a zoom.  No more plus, plus,plus,plus,plus to look at eyes then minus,minus,minus,minus,minus to back out.  It looks amazing and clear…even outdoors in bright sun at the beach. Its like going from a 13inch laptop screen to a 30inch monitor. The only thing that it a hard habit to break is Canon moved the magnifying glass to the other side of the camera so I keep pressing the wrong button with my thumb to magnify.  It is now on the left which will take some time getting used to.

4)The 70-200 firing INTO direct sun at sunset was a little slow to focus and had a little difficulty. The primes 85 and 50 did not.  The 85 is my go to lens for my portrait work so I don’t see that being to much of an issue for me.  Also the 24mm 1.2 L performed amazing with the 5d3 as it had some of the same problems on the 5d2 as the 50mm 1.2 did.

5) The “cloudy” WB setting in RAW (which is what I usually shoot under for nice skin tones) comes out a little too “orange” with the 5d3. I went back to AWB. I can adjust in LR if needed or I may just set it myself in camera slightly cooler than 5500K.  But it is noticeable to me.I am trilled with the camera at this point.  The focus issue is worth the upgrade to me.  The images are gorgeous…just like the 5d2.  I really didn’t expect to see a HUGE difference in the quality of the final image.  For me and my workflow it is the ease of use and speed that I GET those images that is a huge plus for me.

*I think you have two choices: Trade to the Nikon system OR get the 5d3 to stay with Canon. I have shot with Nikon before. It feels like that when shooting with the 5d3-fast, confident, spot on focus. Everything else is the beautiful images that canon users have learned to love and the fast prime lenses love this camera as well.

Love to hear any more feedback from other 5d3 users or answer any questions as well.
Photogs: Off Camera Lighting, Senior Session

Photogs: Off Camera Lighting, Senior Session

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Natural light is my favorite light.  I was trained in natural light and studied “natural light experts”.  I still love utilizing reflectors, shadows, the sun, my white shirt, and being outdoors for portrait sessions. But when I found the marriage of off camera light with ambient light I was  more than thrilled.  And thankful for the lighting work and knowledge with my friend John Helms.

Additionial light can certainly enhance portrait work on location.  And what better location than this gorgeous house up on the Chattahoochee River where we photographed our 2013 Senior Model, Chastyne.

In the the images Chastyne is  facing the big open doors out to the balcony.  I am standing on the balcony with my Canon 5DII and 85mm1.2 lens.  A reflector is low and camera left pulling in a little bit more light from the porch area.  The 85mm is ideal for this shot and I was at 2.8.

Chastyne is beautiful and this is still a great shot of her.  But in the second image you can see the difference when adding an off camera flash with the 580exII triggered with the PocketWizard FlexTT5.  The flash is actually behind her on the ground and angled up.  The light bounces off the ceiling, spreads, and illuminates the room and Chastyne   And I am still utlizing the “natural” ambient light coming in from the 5pm sun from the porch and windows to light her from the front.

Again, thanks Chastyne for making both images beautiful!  Shoot in RAW, playing with WB, and adding a simple speedlight can dramatically change the look and feel of an image.

You can see other equipment and products we use on our “What I do” Pinterest Board.

Editing portraits, Lightroom

Editing portraits, Lightroom

⋅ ALL SESSIONS, Photographers ⋅

Lightroom 4 is my main editing and cataloging system.  I do get a lot of questions about editing and workflow so I thought I would address that in a post.  You can view some other editing posts HERE.

So here is how my workflow goes:

-After a shoot I come back to my office and immediately upload the RAW images from the cards to an external hard.  I open up a new catalog in Lightroom for every client.  That way I don’t have to search through different months or several categories to find images of a certain client.

-Lightroom pulls all the images onto my MacPro from the external drive and I go through and “5 Star” all the ones I want to keep.

-Next I filter by “5 Star” ranking and apply some presets to the images that I created and adjust clarity, vibrance, saturation, vignette, etc.  I also have the option to take a “5 STAR” to a “4 STAR” during this pass.  I try to get the number of images under 100

-Finally I export all the images as full size JPEGs with a “low sharpen” from Lightroom onto a folder on my desktop.  That folder is copied to a drobo drive and also travels over to Sallye Anne’s iMac where she takes over with orders, final edits, and lab adjustments.

Here is a recent “Before and After”shot of 2013 Senior, Leila.

The image on the LEFT is out of camera RAW and imported into Lightroom

The image on the RIGHT was edited with the following:

Clarity +9

Vibrance+38

Sharpening Amt to 44

Highlight Priority Post-Crop Vignetting -15

Export as JPEG

The version on the left looks great to me but I love a warmer look with a little more “punch” and clarity like the edited version on the right.

Great light+ great makeup+beautiful senior=less editing time!!

This is how I would crop and post the image for blog and web use.  Feel free to leave some comments or questions.  Thanks

 

 

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©2013