Fall Portraits

Bei at the Blair-Wallis area near Laramie.

(Click to view larger)

I love taking portraits, but I don't do it often enough because mostly I go out shooting in remote places by myself.  This fall I'm shooting a few Senior Portraits--a tradition that has emerged since I was in high school back in the Middle Ages.  It's a big deal for high school seniors now to get formal or not-so-formal outdoor portraits taken.  I did a couple last year and am doing a couple this year, but I'm too busy with school to shoot many.  I won't post them because I didn't ask permission to plaster them on the internet, but I did go up to Blair last night to take some photos of Bei while the leaves are so nice.  Tomorrow I'm heading to the Snowies with a senior to shoot some portraits with Medicine Bow Peak in the background. That will be fun.  

Photo geek information:  Since I only have one strobe, that's what I'm using here.  Manual exposure for background, SB800 through white umbrella camera left, TTL, thin clouds or shade are best.

Portraits by Miguel Angel Sanchez

If you haven't seen the work of Miguel Angel Sanchez, check it out because it's incredible.  He was featured recently in the NYT Lens Blog (worth a daily look) for his portraits of Egyptian protesters.  The portraits are carefully designed to evoke the style of Renaissance paintings, and they do.  According to the Lens Blog each image takes about a week to produce. 

In the words of Sanchez (from Lens):

“Each person is like a poem that has to be synthesized, always searching for the best metaphor that represents what each one of them evokes in me, without losing the connection with the reality that is presented in front of the camera.”

I'd love to learn how he does it.  The light that pours in from out of the photographs is fantastic.