Creating portraits and documenting life!
It’s been a several years since I had been to the State Fair of Texas. I saw a post online where someone was looking to get some portraits made there. I replied to the post and ended up booking the portrait session. Here are some of the portraits I made that afternoon.
A while back I was killing some time and I was playing with the Snapseed app. If you are not familiar with that app, it’s basically a photo editor.
I’ve been mostly a portrait photographer over the years, however, for the last five or six years I’ve really started photographing anything I find interesting.
So while playing with Snapseed I combined portraits with other images I’ve taken and here are the results.
I shoot more black and white film than color but when I shoot color I have 3 film stocks that are my go to for different reasons. They are Kodak Ektar 100, Fuji Superia XTRA 400, and Kodak Portra 400. I generally shoot Kodak Portra 400 when I’m doing portraits. I’ll even shoot film and use Portra on paid portrait shoots. Portra is a pretty versatile film and it looks good at box speeds as well as over exposed by a stop or two. Here are some examples of what Kodak Portra looks like. These are unedited photos straight from the film scans.
So after investing in the Fuji XT 10 system I ended up with 4 lenses: the 18-55, 55-200, 60mm f2.8 macro, and a samyang 12mm. I had this system for about a year and a half and I had to reluctantly sell it to pay off some bills. I do miss the system and I’d buy into the Fuji system again if I could justify it or had the opportunity. Here are more images that I made while I had that camera.
And here is more from the Fuji x20…
Recently I posted a video about the second photography studio that I had. Here are just a few of the thousands of images done in that studio.
Set up: I had painted a 9′ wide portion of one of the walls and floor white. I laid down two 4×8 sheets of tile board on the floor which gives the reflection you see in the images.
Lighting: For a seamless white look I used two strobes facing the background / back wall. I would use 1 strobe and a 60″ reversable umbrella or a softbox for the main light up front. With a 60″ umbrella I could photograph 1 person or a group of about 12. That’s the most I’ve shot at once using that set up in this studio.
Gear: Back then I generally shot Canon for all of my digital work. 90% of the time I had on a 50mm f1.8 lens for portrait work done in the studio. This was done on the Canon 7D.
This young lady was a model who made it to be on one of the seasons of America’s Next Top Model. However, she found out she was pregnant before they started shooting so she had to drop out. A couple of years later she decided to get back into modeling and I helped her rebuild her portfolio.
I used to subscribe to several photography magazines… for YEARS!!! I read an article in one of the magazines about a photographer who was photographing people under a black light with neon paint. The work I saw him do was amazing. It wasn’t amazing only from a photographic standpoint but he did all of the painting himself. I decided to give a go at it and I did a few themed shoots like that. This is a result from one of those shoots.
Camera: Canon 7D
lens: Canon 50mm f1.8
Settings: ISO 800, f2.8 at 1 second
I got approached to do a 70’s styled shoot. The images were going to be submitted to a magazine for publication for a vintage issue. I decided to “keep it real” and since digital photography didn’t exist in the 70’s, I shot the images on film. Because what’s easier than shooting film to get an authentic film look… Here is one of the photos from the shoot.
Scott Alan Photography 