Pin Up Pictures

My good friend and almost-brother Craig Tovey asked me to help him shoot a 1940's pin up calendar girl theme for a local beauty school. He really had to twist my arm, but I decided there are worse ways to spend a gloomy winter afternoon than to photograph energetic young women in retro swimsuits.

We shot more than 20 models while students from The Echelon Edge Academy of Hair took care of makeup, hair, and creative direction. The girls brought a lot of variety, from traditional pin up to sultry vampire pin up, but I think we accommodated everyone pretty well and had a lot of fun. I was there as Craig's assistant I only got to shoot a small handful of the sessions, but it was a lot of fun. He really has a lot of editing work ahead of him, but when he posts a gallery I'll link to it. In the mean time, here are a few of the ones I shot and edited. If you're a studying the fine art of hair, makeup and aesthetics and think you or your school would have fun at a shoot like this, drop me a line!

Lammers

A cute family taking advantage of the beautiful fall colors with a Heber Valley family portrait. They even brought along the family dog!

Roberts

No blog entries since June? What am I doing? I'm going to have to make up for lost time, so I'll post a bunch of shoots over the next little while, even if they're not the most recent ones.

To start off this tardy run of picture posts, here's a lovely couple cashing in on a gift photo session they received from their daughter:

McKaylee and Shaelee

Here are some more images from last week's shoot with McKaylee and Shaelee. Pictures like these remind me of the things I love about making photographs of people! (I'm still working on some favorites of the younger two girls. I'll post them later.)

Four cute girls

It's easy to come away with great pictures when the models are four cute and cooperative teenage girls. Here are just a few from this very fun session;, I may post more later.

I love this first one. I created a black and white conversion that fits perfectly, and it may be one of my all-time favorite portraits.

I'm not sure why the red circle appealed to me, but she was willing to humor the idea.

I am not usually an HDR guy, but I gave it a shot here and found I preferred the blown-out sky. So the bottom and extreme top of this is an HDR composite, with my original blown sky behind them.

Friends don't always have to hug for the camera, right?

I assume someone once planted these roses before the building was abandoned. I bet they'd be happy to know the plant is still doing just fine and makes a nice backdrop.

Last one for now...

Little models

I used to scoff at infrequently updated blogs. I don't anymore...

I recently had a chance to bring my studio lights to the Paul Mitchell hair academy in Provo to photograph some student hair and makeup. Typically the models would be older and the styles more dramatic, but these girls were right around ten years old and I think the stylists did a nice job not making them look like those scary beauty pageant girls.

I'll post a few more pictures later, but I've already put off this post more than a week, so here are just a few of the shots. More soon!

Edit: I had a request for a lighting diagram so here it is.

It's a simple two-light setup using Elinchrom 400 monolights in softboxes. (I think I learned the technique from a @jmarkwallace video.) One softbox is about 12 inches off the ground angled up, the other directly above it about 6 feet, angled down. I shot through the gap between the two--which incidentally sparked a debate amongst the makeup artists as to when my pants would split. (They didn't. Too bad for the makeup girls, right?)

Since I noticed the girls tended to drift to their right to have a better view of the images on my laptop, I added a large Lastolite Triflector reflector camera left. It was easier than moving them back into position and I kind of liked the lighting that way.

Senior portrait shoot in Heber City

There are a lot of great outdoor locations for senior portraits in Heber City. We got a late start so we only hit a few of them, but we had a great time and got some great images.

I know senior portrait season is quickly coming to an end, but I have a great time shooting seniors so if you're still in the market, well, I'm game.