Behind the Scenes - Baxter from Aaron Nace on Vimeo.

This shoot was completely different from my norm. First of all, it was raining during the entire shoot, which was outdoors. So it was a pretty easy decision to not use lighting. That worked out well, because the lighting is really even in the rain. I set up my 86″ parabolic reflector on a lightstand with an umbrella adapter and used it as a literal umbrella during the shoot. Worked like a charm

Everyone showed up wearing more or less regular human clothes, which im my opinion, is a good way to date and kill the magic of a photo. It is hard to get across the idea you want if there is a giant Abercrombie logo slapping you in the face hah. Not a big deal - headshots solve everything

Plus it is a way to avoid taking the band shot everyone has seen before. “everyone stand in a line and look cool”.

In all it was a lot of fun, and not working with any equipment besides the camera was liberating! Something I am going to be doing more often.

This was a fun shoot with a NC painter, Matt Hooker, and for this image, he is also a violinist
For some reason winter decided to show up today, and I was quickly reminded that I wouldn’t be shooting outdoors much in the coming months. When it is this cold, everyone just wants to keep warm, no one really cares if the light isn’t “perfect”, including me. Which sucks, it means more compromises and less time spent on the shoot than desired. Nothing you can do about it though. Shoot indoors

I really wanted to capture a solitary feeling with the image, so I just used 1 light as my main, and had the sunlight coming through the roof serve as a slight rim. The sky was actually pretty cloudy, so any real rim, would have to be done in post. We set up a WhiteLightning X1600 into a med softbox cam left, and weighted it down with a vagabond II as well as a sandbag. I really wanted to use an 86″ parabolic reflector here, but the wind caught it as soon as it was opened, and about carried me away, so that wasn’t happening

The shot turned out a success, thanks to everyone involved. It is always great to see these things come together.

Just finished buliding a website and photographic models/furniture for a local furniture store and designer, Area. The shoot went very well, basically we shot all day, and different models showed up when they could. This makes for a very fluid shoot, you don’t have to worry about photographing the same person all day. Having a couple people there to help out with hair, makeup, dress, and lighting makes this much easier. We had 4 people on hand, mostly friends, to help out.

This was my first big shoot using a ringflash, and I thought it went very well. Getting a perfect fill out of this thing is priceless, it basically means you can do whatever you want with your lighting, and not have to worry about someone’s face being completely unlit. Rim lights, here we come!

Photoshop was relatively minimal, Just some work getting everything to have the same feel.
In all , I would say the shoot was GREAT SUCESS!

more to come

Lately me and aaron have been doing lots of shoots with models for our portfolios!

This past week we’ve shot Brandi, Melissa and Brittany and tomorrow we are shooting Theresa!

Here are some of the shots/outtakes from the shoots!

Brandi

Melissa

Brittany

It feels really, really good to be shooting more models and less me. More, please!

it was really interesting to hear how unhealthy margarine is from you guys! we’ll definetly be NOT eating that anymore. so, here’s the menu today with even worse pictures.

breakfast was one big peach and cranberry muffin, which i added up the calories and totalled at around 270.

lunch we got at the “Bear Rock Cafe” in furniture land south (we bought our couch and a rug!! there was a 50% sale on, awesome). It consisted of flatbread, chicken, peppers and BBQ sauce. I asked for no cheese

Dinner was mini pizzas with turkey pepperoni, lettuce, onions and chicken. Dessert was sorbet again, this time with peaches and grapes.

A couple of people asked for the recipe we used to make sorbet! It’s super easy, so I will share below:

step 1:

Put in a food processor 1pint of blueberries, 1 medium pear and 1 medium peach

whiz it around until it is really smooth

add and a teeny tiny bit of salt (1/8 tsp)

step 2:

with 1 cup of boiling water, add 1/2 cup of sugar and stir until its dissolved

step 3:

strain the fruit mixture until any seeds/bits have come out and discard them

step 4:

mix the fruit and the syrup (sugar water) together and freeze until its solid

step 5:

when its frozen, take it out. cut it up and put it in the food processor again. this makes it look more like sorbet/less like an ice lolly

step 6:

stir in dried cranberries, re-freeze mixture

and voila! Its incredibly good. and healthy!