OH MY GOSH!!! + Photoshoot with my sister! :P

So I have been away for a while and so much has been happening!!!

I have hardly been able to pick up my camera for the past like 4 months because I have been in the Fire Academy at College of the Mainland. It has been an amazing experience but it's taking so much time! I can't really do anything else. Classes are Monday-Friday 8am to 5pm.
Luckily though, I will be done on May 10th!!!

Well here is one of my most recent shoots!
Also my first time to really use my new Paul C Buff Alien Bee external strobe that I got!!

All the images were takin with 50mm 1.8 in my makeshift studio in the garage!!! :)

Let me know what you think!! I love critiques!!!! xD

I know there are quite a few where the background is not consistent... :( I was working with the limitations of my equipment and just trying some new things out.

Please critique!!! :)

So I would love to get you honest opinion on this image. I take nothing personal, so please you can be as harsh as you want. :)

Tulips!

Alright so last my dad got some tulips for my mother and when they opened up the were REALLY nice. So I thought it would make a great photo-op. Let me know what y'all thing. 

Oh I just got my track shoes yesterday and the are like totally awesome. So there is definitely going to be a shoot with those. Also I have me first track meet this Thursday at St. Thomas high school in Houston so hopefully I can get some nice pictures. I also have a track meet this Saturday, again I hope to get some nice photos.

Bullets

First off I would like to thank all of you guys that commented on my last post!! It's nice to see that people still stop by!!! 

So I was playing around with my external flash some more!!! I didn't change my camera angle because I wanted to learn more about flash placement. What would happen if I put my flash here or there. Let me know what you think?

Oh! For those of you into guns. The ammo is 7.62x54r it's Russian ammo, for my 1931 Russian Mosin Nagant.... I ought to do a photo shoot with that. It's really cool with the bayonet and pretty wood finish. I ought to try and find some old WWII looking torn up or military cloths that look Russian and do something. Although I would need a model for that and the only thing I seem to be able to take pictures of lately are inanimate objects.  :_(

Yea I have been really discouraged lately. It almost feels like people are afraid of me as a photographer because I am a guy.  It's really discouraging... it seems God has given me a gift but people aren't letting me have the chance to use it.

Oh! I am sorry, I am sure your not interested in my problems.  I hope you enjoy the photos.

My blog should be getting updated fairly regularly now that photography class has started. 

Rain + Puddle + Off Camera Flash = This Shot!!

Yea so Photography Class has started back up and I am so stoked about it. Anyway we got to photograph anything we wanted for our first assignment.

Well one of those days it rained and there was a puddle in out front flower bed (which doesn't have any flowers, so would it be a weed bed or dirt bed? Hmm must look into that.). There was also a kind of steady stream of water flowing down from out gutters into that puddle. So I figured what a great time to experiment with off camera flash.

So a little about the setup.

I had my SB-900 about 6 feet to my left and about 5 feet from the subject, no diffuser, with the little white  bounce card pulled out, and last but not least I had the flash head angled at 90 degrees. Now I was about 4 to 5 feet away from the subject, and my camera was pretty much on the ground.

Let me know what you think!!

Using Flash in Outdoor Portraiture

Yes! I did indeed use a flash for these shots, and no I did not photoshop the background into the picture.

I used the flash to light my subject but had my shutter speed slow enough that it was open longer then the flash, thus allowing the ambient light to fill in. 

My first attempt at ghosting.

Sisters

I had the pleasure of doing my first maternity shoot with these sisters who were* only two weeks apart in their pregnancy. 

* I say were because Michelle (the one in the blue) had her little baby girl the day after this shoot. 

Dice

These are VERY hard to shoot.... especially since the lighting wasn't so great and so it was hard to get the dice to really stop.

Playin the Guitar!