I was brainstorming what I could do for my February photoshoot, and thought that it’d be fun to make it festive. I’m not big on Valentine’s Day, like, at all (it’s a fake holiday!!!), except for the excuse to eat cookies and chocolates, but it has some motifs that I thought could be interesting to work with. I wanted to use the motifs as objects rather than themes, and not get too cheesy with it.
We had originally planned to do this photoshoot the weekend before Valentine’s Day so that I could get these photos up during the week of Valentine’s, but that weekend turned out to be busier than we thought it’d be, so we rescheduled. And anyway, the snow storm was going on just two days before our scheduled photoshoot, so if we had done the photoshoot then, we’d have had to maneuver around muddy slush, which would have been inconvenient.
The day before the shoot, I was wearing an ankle-length down coat. And today I was wearing a light zip-up jacket, the kind you might wear while exercising. It was uncharacteristically hot and bright. I usually try to shoot in soft lighting, and if it’s a harsh day, I’ll find a shady area and constrain myself there, but this time I wanted to see if I could play around with the light and use those harsh lines.
I like that diagonal split between the light and shadow in the second photo. After taking several photos in that area, we moved to another area, and when we finished there, we went to another area by walking through the previous area, and whilst passing by, we saw that that wall was now just a solid shadow, which made capturing those previous photos feel more special.
I like the bokeh we got from the light reflecting off the cheap plastic garland in the third photo.
I like how the light falls on Austin’s eyes and that he’s squinting through it in the photo below. There were some photos we got where he wasn’t squinting, but I think I prefer this! I like the play with the light.
Posing for goofy shots is a mandatory part of being one of my models! Is this not Vogue material? I’m kind of in love with that little red sparkly fedora. I got all three of these props at Party Land. They sell lots of tacky decorations. I didn’t buy the little red sparkly fedora at first because it was just over $2 and completely useless, but a few days after making my trip to the store, I was still thinking about that darn hat, so I made another trip back to get it. I have no regrets!
After having my fun playing around with photographing in harsh light, I decided to go back to what I was comfortable with and get some shots in softer light as well. The vibe is v different from this set of photos, so I’m sharing them in a separate post. Look out for them on Wednesday!