De's Portrait Photoshoot
De and I have shot before and she has always come ready to go. Today we were out in Lodi, Ca to get some images. I rarely go to Lodi, so I had to rely on De to tell me where to go. The first place we hit up was the lake. It was a beautiful park with gorgeous trees and grass to use as our backdrop. De brought a fun yellow, black, and white outfit to shoot in - perfect for a nice warm day!
To be honest, when I do these portrait shoots, the setting doesn’t matter too much. The focus of the images is the model so most of the frame will be taken up by them. The setting does, however, help set a mood for the photoshoot and I do try to get a few environmental shots when I can. The only thing that matters is that the background doesn’t look hideous. So things just can’t be fixed!
De has a prominent tattoo on her back that she really loves. I always take the opportunity to photograph it whenever we shoot. When shooting the tattoo, it’s not good enough to just get a photo of it. The tattoo needs to be in context with the rest of the image. We’ve done things to really highlight the tattoo while maintaining interest in other parts of the frame. In the photo above, the focus is actually on De’s face with the tattoo being a bit defocused.
Thought the area was very pretty, it was a bit difficult to shoot wider photos because of all the people around. Being a nice day, everyone was out enjoying the weather. We found a nice spot to get a few wider shots so that the lake could be showcased a little.
I used just one lens for the entire shoot - which is pretty rare. I went with the Zeiss 35mm 1.4 the entire time we shot. Typically I either go with two cameras with different focal lengths or just changes lenses every so often. That was not the case today. I was just really liking the 35mm and how it was performing for me. It’s an expensive lens so it better perform well!
For you technical photogs out there, you may notice some chromatic aberration on the side of De’s face in the above photo. I notice it too… but to me it doesn’t distract from the beauty of the image. lenses and camera manufacturers try to get rid of things like this and flare, but a lot of times people have gotten used to the way these artifacts look in photos. To me it’s not a blemish, but an enhancement!
De and I were able to get lots and lots of photos during our time together. We spent about an hour of shooting and I came away with about 40 keepers from our session. It was a ton of fun and I’m sure we’ll be shooting again really soon!
If you’re interested in portraits, headshots, or any other type of photography, contact me and let’s set up a time to shoot! I’ve got many openings available!