WPPI Orange County Photo Walk Recap

Mirta and I had a great time at the Orange County WPPI Photowalk in San Juan Capistrano, near the mission, with our friends Jason Groupp, Mike Colon, Jessica Claire and Dave Doeppel. Here are some of our favorite images. Many, many thanks to our fabulous model, outstanding photographer and good friend Kim Daniels. Couldn’t have done it without her!!!

The image above was shot in open shade with the help of a large translucent panel acting as a reflector. Not as efficient as a silver reflector or even a white one, because we didn’t want too much reflected light on the face, just enough. Another good thing about a large reflector is that, when there is greenery around, it keeps the green cast down to a minimum. Most of the images of Kim in this post were shot with a 70-200 2.8 VRI Nikon lens, pretty wide open, around 3.2, on a D3s body.

This is one of the “secret weapons” when shooting outdoors, OCF or off camera flash. By placing your subject with the sun at their back or side you can get nice rim lighting and “clean” faces. Of course, if you expose for the face, you won’t get nice blue skies. This is when a little flash comes in handy. You can use an off camera speed light, aproximately 60 to 65 watts, or, a Profoto B1, 500 watts. These Profoto self contained units are amazing,. From the first time I used them, they became my favorite lighting tool. Small, no battery pack, portable, the battery lasts forever, remote control by very small increments, and they can even be TTL for Nikon and Canon. Here I’m using the B1 in a “shoot through umbrella” to increase the size of the light source and create a softer light on Kim. Because I used a long lens (70-200),I was able to keep the background out of focus. In this situation one can use a Neutral Density Filter (ND) to render the background even softer. The horizontal image above, and the one below were shot this way.

You can see below how the image above was shot. Here the sun was coming from the side, so we used a translucent panel, positioned very close, to diffuse the sunlight. The far away background, and large f.stop rendered the background nice and soft. A not too low angle allowed for the background to be the trees, and not the sky. A high angle also can help flatter the subject (not that Kim needs that here) and eliminate distracting elements in the background.

Love this gate, or wall, or whatever it is… I want it!!! This spot was Kim’s idea, as I said, she’s also a gifted photographer. This is natural light with a little help from a silver reflector.

Oh yeah… I forgot, there was free food involved! Our friends from Shoot.Edit bought Pizza for everyone at Selmas Pizzeria after the shoot. Thank you Jared Bauman! Jason also gave away free Master Classes, WPPI passes and more. Here he is giving away 2 great Bay Photo products, a “Wood Print” and a “Metal Print”.  Bay will be at WPPI of course, so stop by their booth and check out their beautiful Wood and Metal Prints.