My Sunday Series on Outdoor Portraits remains on hiatus as I consider changing this day’s theme to Available Light Portraiture, which is what today’s post is about. This post also takes a look at three of my most popular models starting with Tia Stoneman
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Over many years I’ve posted many different photographs of many different models demonstrating various photography, portrait lighting and software techniques but whenever certain models are featured I seem get a higher than normal number of page views, questions and responses to these particular images.
My Three Most Popular Models
Every one of these special models have some interesting similarities, not so much in how they look, with the most notable being that I haven’t photographed any of them in a while. Not that I don’t want to.
I photographed the first of these models—Tia Stoneman—for several years and she was featured many times in magazine articles and lighting equipment reviews that I wrote for the print edition of Shutterbug. I only photographed my next most popular model three times; twice for a calendar client and once for a private shoot in my former home. The third model I only photographed twice and both times were during a group model shoot. Yet whenever I post or feature any of these women’s images the Internet seems to love them and I can see why. I think it’s because they are not only attractive but an inner light shines through in the portraits. Needless to say, each of them was a delight to photograph.
I photographed today’s featured model—Tia Stoneman—many times over six years. Tia was an actress who enjoyed modeling and over all of the shoots we had together, she brought that acting talent to bear to all of the images that we made.
I first photographed Tia at a group model shoot in Northern Colorado and she quickly became my original muse. I photographed her for a long time including after she became pregnant, afterwards with and without her first child (above right.) I also photographed her later when she was pregnant with her second child. Our collaboration ended when Tia moved ti the Four Corners area, an 800-mile round trip from Daisy Hill. I hope someday when her children are older, we may be able to shoot together again. Even so, I treasure the memories of our shoots together.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Tia in the foyer my former home that had a large North-facing window on the second floor and was my second favorite —the kitchen was number one—places to make available light glamour images before I moved to Daisy Hill. Tia was extremely versatile and could switch from sexy glamour model—here, she reminds me of Eva Green in Sin City 2—to a wholesome mom.
The camera used for this portrait was a Canon EOS 5D Mark I along with one of favorite available light portrait lenses, the EF 135mm f/2,8 Soft Focus lens. (I think this is the replacement lens that I purchased after the incident immortalized in the first Stupid Photographer’s Tricks post.) A 550EX speedlite was bounced off the ceiling as fill but I’m not sure it did that much; so this is essentially an available light portrait. The exposure was 1/60 sec at f/5 and ISO 320 with a plus one-third stop exposure compensation.
If you’re interested in learning how I shoot available light glamour portraits, you can pick up a copy of my book Available Light Glamour Photography. Right now Amazon is reporting it as “Temporarily out of stock” but used copies are,, available for around thirty-six bucks, as I write this, and Kindle copies are available for $27.69 for those preferring a digital format.