My Sunday series on outdoor portraiture continues today with an image of Kellie—yes, the same Kellie who created such a hubbub in the magazine world when I photographed her. Today’s featured image is from the second time that Mary and I photographed her. Since it’s #nationalsaysomethingniceday I’d like to say that Kellie was one of the sweetest and most easy to work with models that I ever photographed.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.” —Socrates
I once wrote a post entitled “I Wanted To Write A Post About Wedding Photography…” where I talked about how a few years ago my then-accountant suggested that I shoot weddings because, “people pay crazy money for wedding photography.” While that may be true for some photographers, back when Mary and were younger and actually shooting weddings every weekend, that didn’t happen to us unless he has a different definition of “crazy” than what we experienced. On that post I featured a portrait of Courtney in her wedding dress and so today here’s…
Another Bridal Portrait
It has been a long time, maybe 20 years, since I photographed an actual wedding but when I was testing some monolights for the former print edition of Shutterbug, I asked long-time collaborator Pam Simpson if she had a wedding dress she could borrow and together we made an image that was featured on the cover of the magazine. You can see it here. I also used a different bridal photography approach photographing Pam you can see here that was also made in my home studio. But what about photographing brides outdoors?
How I Made this Portrait: I photographed Kellie outdoors on the grounds of the First Presbyterian Church in Brighton, Colorado. The church was built in 1886 and was restored as a Bicentennial project. The City of Brighton assumed ownership in 1976 and the building is available for community use. The portrait was made as part of an article that I wrote for the print edition of Shutterbug. I don’t remember which issue because I don’t have any issues, except the last one, anymore. I tried to give away 35 years of the magazine on Craig’s List but there were no takers, so they were recycled.
The camera used for this portrait was a Canon EOS 20D, a semi-professional DSLR back when 8.2-megapixels seemed like a lot of resolution. The lens was an EF 85mm f/1.8 during a time when I didn’t own that many EF lenses but had this particular lens because I still believe it’s perfect for portrait photography. Fill light was provided by a Canon 420EX speedlite that I owned at the time. Exposure was 1/160 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 200; flash sync for the 20D was a surprisingly high 1/250 sec. A minus two-thirds stop exposure compensation was applied, because Canon’s LCD screen were optimistically bright during that time—and may still be.
PS: If you want to see more of Kellie, there’s a bunch of other suggested posts featuring her that are shown below.
Joe is author of Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography a book featuring information about how to shoot glamour portraits in available light situations or by using minimal lighting equipment such as reflectors or speedlights. Used copies are available from Amazon.com for around ten bucks, as I write this. Kindle copies are $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.