Creating Personalized Portraits With Samantha Ward
This month has been super busy, but crazy fun! There has been photography work every day.
I am doing car photography, Exterior and interior shots. There’s a lot to learn about that. Maybe I’ll make a blog post next!
Jon has been busy with video work and is currently filming in Boston.
we hosted our first NEPA Camera Club meeting here at Diamond City Studios. I met some new people, we talked, ate snacks, and had a set up in the studio to practice taking each other’s portraits.
Also……I met my new friend Samantha Ward, who is also a Photographer who runs and owns Samantha Ward Photography. She asked me to take some portraits of her for her website blog and I was thrilled to do it!
We first hashed out some ideas and outfits that she wanted to wear, then I came up with some ideas to collaborate and made a mental shot list.
She prides herself as a photographer who tells stories of what she captures. One of her props was this neat book page decoration she brought with her to the shoot.
I photographed the prop at a few different angles both closer and then further from our light source. My initial idea was that I was going to leave these around the same size and photoshop them all over the background. While embedding the prop it came in big AF and I really liked the way that it looked.
I positioned the flowers all around the client in her portrait shot and then edited/ shaded each book prop individually to match. This was the final portrait that I entitled “ The Storyteller”
We then traded out our gray muslin background for a brown muslin background, changed outfits, and did a more laid back shoot with a dress and flowers. This part was really fun because I had Samantha throwing bunches of flowers up in the air a few hundred times! (it wasn’t that much…probably felt like it though) There is a certain talent it takes to throw flowers and she was an expert by the end.
Samantha with Sunflowers
These photos were all taken with 2 continuous lights. I had one light to the left pointed at the backdrop for separation, and the second light was at an angle on the right, positioned high and angled down. I had Samantha look to the right at the light for most of these shots.
Hope you enjoyed me showing you a little bit of my process. Send any questions or comments you have my way!
I also invite you to follow me on Facebook and/or instagram and if you are a Photographer or just starting out and want to join the NEPA Camera Club to attend our meetups and meet like minded individuals here
