Powerful and Gentle Portraits From The Castle

Good Morning Everybody,

Today is our last day here at the sheep covered fields of the Castle and I feel I still have a lot you tell you about.  But, with that said, there are a lot of folks here that want to get one last day of exploring in and we're counted in with the group.  They want to head out soon so I'll do my best to get a quick post up for you today. 

Here is my game plan over the next few days.  I'll show you several more images from our fabulous week  at the Castle and with Clay's permission, even include a few of his fabulous images.  A lot of my teaching this week included a lot of new FLASH techniques that resulted in some terrific images - I want to share those techniques with you as soon as I can get to a keyboard long enough to make that happen.  And finally, I want to share with you a few more of my HDR images I've been capturing these last few days.  We head out to Venice bright and early tomorrow - it's about a 3 1/2 hour drive and I'm looking to getting some more terrific images. 

But for today how about I show you a few more images from this week's shoot.  Let's get right to it.

Image 1: 

This is another image captured right after the image I posted in yesterday’s image-of-the-day post.  We were working on the second floor of the castle and as we descended the steps I really liked how the light was flowing into the bottom of the stairwell.

I asked Orchi to take up a standing position at the bottom of the stairwell, positioned her against the black door, tilted the camera slightly and shot away.  I really like how all the diagonal lines work to frame up our model and lead the viewer’s eye directly to the subject.

Image 2:

In this next image I wanted to show the class just how effective a wide angle lens can be in creating leading lines when used in portrait photography.  With the very short lens I used in this image the lines converged very dramatically right to our subject.

I was lucky enough to have a uncluttered wall that worked very well as a background for this image. You know, medieval castles have very cool, textured walls for this kind of photography ;~)

Image 3:

OK, this is not your pretty model portrait image.  MJ – his real name is Michael Jordon, no relation, stepped in as my model for this photograph.  MJ has such a cool look, especially when hit with such dramatic lighting.  Originally I was going to split light him placing light on only 1/2 of his face.

Then I decided to let just a hint of light fall into the far eye as well and that’s when I thought the image came alive.  That hint of light draws the viewer to that dark eye almost beckoning in a very foreboding way to come closer.  I love it when you can use lighting to create a mood and then I feel, a very powerful portrait like this image of MJ..  Thanks MJ!!! Maybe a modeling career in your future?

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  I hear the natives are getting restless and want to hit the road.  How about I see you soon.

Arrivederci,  David