Coming soon to a stable near you!

This Spring I will be doing Horse Portrait Mini-Sessions at some local stables. Ramaker Stables for sure and Rolling Ridge because I have some fans out there too. Are there any blog readers that ride at a different barn/stable that would like AzulOx Mini-Sessions to appear?

Oh, time to answer what exactly a mini-session is.

* 75$ to book your 20 minute time slot (versus 250 for the hour)
* Online Gallery for viewing and print orders
* Facebook Favorites – facebook friendly sizes to share with your network.

Dates and Time slots will be announced soon. Sunday afternoon’s are the preferred time/date combo.

Ok, Mr AzulOx, words are nice, but lets see some pictures!
done and done.

Emily’s Bridal Portraits went awesome Sunday’s in San Antonio. I was assisted by my longest-time friend, Russ. Emily brought along Kate.

First off, the sky was beautiful, some wispy clouds, but otherwise blue. The wind continued my streak of Lubbock-like breeze patterns, hard and often. Undaunted, we set off on to the Deco District in San Antonio near Woodlawn Park. We roamed up and down the streets utilizing the funky architecture to fit Emily’s personality and wedding style.

Second, Emily is fantastic to work with. She claims to be shy, but I never saw that. Continuing another streak, she learned her model moves from America’s Next Top Model. That is a streak of 4 clients in a row for me, I had to confess again to watching it for the photography/modeling as well. Doesn’t help with the man card, but it helps with the photo card.

Em has a neo-funky dress which fit her awesomely, can’t show the dress yet, don’t want the groom peaking too much. Some traditions still hold and this is one I like.

Our favorite background is the one that Russ is modeling here.

We went with an Orbis Ring Flash as the single light here. When Emily was in the frame, we used a white sheet as a scrim to block the sunlight and bring the ambient down some so that we could carry an aperture and get that ringflash look. If this makes no sense, head over to strobist.com .

Once the wedding happens in May, I will give it the full blog treatment with lots of pretty pictures!

– JB

Chelsey and I met up again at Ramaker Stables in Leader, Texas. We had about an hour to knock out some different looks and get a 17 hand horse named Bentley involved. No problem.

We started in the Small Barn, not as new as the Big Barn, but more colorful and possessing more character. I was thinking something along the lines of images out of Dover Saddlery, but prettier.

Tried working with some backlit/Ezybox combo’s, but they weren’t working for me. Ended up with an over/under lighting scheme to bring some beauty and contrast to Chelsey.

This image has a Lastolie 24 inch Ezybox (my favorite) on top, with a big reversible umbrella on the bottom, both are off to one side slightly.

Remember in part one, when I said there were no clouds. That changed for the better.

The barn was fun, but then the sky did me a favor and went wild with clouds and color. Let’s ditch inside the barn and go crazy with the sky’s.

What is more fun that a senior and great skies? A senior, her horse and great skies!

Thanks again to Chelsey for being a wonderful model.

See all of the images here

–JB

Started working with Chelsey after I talked to her from the Sunsets and Horses photos from last week. Said she might be interested in some Senior Portraits. I said, “Let’s do it!”

We started at Cianfrani’s in the square at Georgetown, my favorite coffee shop. Met up with Chelsey and her mother and went over the plan I had set out for us. Our plan was to use the niche’s and vignettes that make the Georgetown square one of my favorite shooting area’s. Thanks to my buddy Geoff Hammond to turning me onto a couple of them.

First, we hit up a doorway on the backside of the square to show off the angles and lines of Chelsey’s 6′2” frame. I used my orbis ringflash on these to give it a high fashion look. Had to make sure the the first location was in the shade because the sun was out with no clouds, although that would change later, because the Orbis eats up a lot of power from my 430’s.

Our second location was at the Rough and Ready Antique Store, a great location for vignettes. The sunlight was hard still with no clouds and about 12:45 in the day. I found a non-wet chair with good color and told Chelsey to “get slinky”. this location produced 2 of my favorites from the day.

The 2 images above seem like they could be from a 1970’s movie set, one starring Farrah Fawcett, or maybe Barbarella.

Then off to the classic alley way in between Rough and Ready Antiques and The Framer’s Gallery. I have used the back drop before. Still love it.

From there, we moved around the corner to a little white table and chair, with the Antique Sign in the background. The last 3 locations are within 30 feet of each other, but each gives such a different vibe. Thanks again to the local merchants of Georgetown fro keeping your stores awesome. Almost Mediterranean in feel, Chelsey is rocking the casual look in these.

And it wouldn’t be a good blog post with out some bodily injury to me, the photographer. We were setting up right on the corner of 7th and Main, watching the cops roll by, when my forehead fell in love with a dowel rod on a lamp post. 3 days later, and I still have a bump, bruise and scab…. Love hurts.

I knew this would be a good location because it really says Georgetown to me, well, not just me, the sign in the back actually reads, “Discover Georgetown”. Figured it would be a good graphic element to work with, and I ran with it as my adrenaline was coursing due to head trauma.

The last location at Georgetown is my wife’s favorite, I like it too. My buddy David helped us out here, the wind blew him to our corner of the street and I used the gift.
He is holding the 24 inch Ezybox while Chelsey get her posin’ on.

We finished up at the Square in a robust 90 minutes of shooting, full of antiques, vignettes, green tea, and battle wounds.

The gallery of Georgetown images is here.

In Part Two we travel to Ramaker Stables

– JB

We live in Austin,Texas. We get to see snow on the Olympics and when we go Skiing in New Mexico or Colorado. But Snow in Austin? Not so much.

Yesterday was a glorious day. Austin received several inches of snow. Two days prior the temperature was in the 70’s. I blame Al Gore.

As a photographer and a Texan, we have to seize rare opportunities. Tuesday was one such opportunity, I posted on Facebook, “Who wants Snow Pictures?”. I got a reply within 10 minutes. Gump and Olivia, some horse friends of my wife, were game so we trekked over to Brushy Creek Park in Cedar Park Texas, an in between meeting spot for us.

My goal was travel light in gear because the snow was occasionally light rain and I didn’t want my gear getting too soaked, so I headed out with my trusty Lastolite Ezybox 24″ and my Orbis Ring Flash. Camera strapped around my neck, I had a hand for each light modifier. Gump and Olivia were willing models, staging a quick snowball fight, and mucking through the mud to get to the prime locations. After my Ezybox toppled twice, Gump and Olivia alternated as VAL’s (voice activated lightstands).

My photography goal at first was Snowing Senior Photos (yes, all caps, it was a main thought). We meandered around the park, using the running trail as a pathway. I was getting some good, some bad, but nothing that I absolutely loved. That is, until we found a sweet spot in the trees with a pathway running away from us. My photography imagery turned to the wood nymphs I have been reading about in the Percy Jackson series (movie? eh, not good). Maybe for its rareness to me, but a good flaky snow just transforms ugly cedar trees into a sweet winter vignette. We finished up the shoot with these fun Girl in the Woods photos.

On the way home, I had to stop off of the toll road onto a sidestreet that dead ended. I had driven past a group of small barn houses in failing condition a 100 times, and decided that because of the snow, today was the day to stop and shoot. I was thinking of my buddy Andy, who jumps fences to get the shot he wants, but I was feeling un-nimble in my snow clothes. The hog wire bottom, barb wire top were daunting to me on this day as the steady flow of cars just feet away were witness to my weakness. Instead, I just used the fence as a compositional element in my frames. I processed the HDR’s by going through Lightroom > Photomatix > Photoshop>Imagenomic>Photoshop.

The sense of urgency and immediacy of yesterday is hard to replicate. The snow that fell was the best snow in this area in 20 years, maybe since 1985. And today? Should be in the 60’s. Grab your camera. Get out the door!

–JB

Thursday Night I headed out to Ramaker Stables to watch my wife ride her new horse Gus. That and I had some ideas of things I wanted to try with lights.
Basically, I wanted to treat the Horses like I usually light my Human Athletes. Give them edge and contrast, while bringing out the ambient exposure if its good.
These images are pretty much how they looked on the back of the LCD. For the Black horses, I added some fill. The White horse, toned down the bright whites just a bit.

The three light are setup in a basic triangle, two behind the horses and one in front around the arena. This gave me different shooting slots to get new angles without having to reset the lights. I have found this to be good way of shooting sports action when you know the general location the athlete will move through. In this case a 20 foot square.

Honestly, I didn’t plan on having a spectacular sunset backdrop, but I was prepared in case one happened. I had maybe 8 minutes of this light to work with. The rest of the night, the background/ambient was not so pretty.

Another example to always bring your camera, and in this case, your lights too.

The rest of the purchase gallery is here

–JB

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick reminder to catch Me and My compadre Geoff Hammond on a twice monthly podcast. We are the Photography talk from Central Texas.

And for the record, we haven’t even delved into gear talk yet, which is dang near impossible for 2 photographers to avoid for this long.

We have talked models, social media, and cedar fever among other topics. Next week we will discuss the client-photographer relationship, so hit up the comments if you got any funny stories.

Thanks for listening

–JB

Some friends of mine got married this weekend.
These are the photos.

The event was held at Shoreline Grill in Austin, Texas on Saturday, Feb 13th.

Small Wedding, Big Emotions. More than one tear of happiness was shed.

The full gallery is here

Enjoy.

Just a quick note.

Sometimes in life we are lucky.

We see something spectacular in a place we have never been, and might not be again.

Camera in hand, let the world breathe around you, fire off a few frames. Exhale.

Take a few seconds today to remember something you are thankful for, let the world exhale a little around you.

(From left to right: Adam Perkins, Joe Thorne, Darren Brown, Kyle Miller)

First up, I remembered to take some setup shots so that I don’t have to draw cheesy diagrams in photoshop.

Second, these Team Rogue guys are F-A-S-T. I asked Coach Sisson if they would be moving quickly through my lighting zone. He said, “well, you won’t be able to tell the difference between their hard and easy, from 4:10 to 4:30 pace.” That, my friends, is hurtling through the bi-pedal atmosphere.

This weeks workout was at Zilker Park in downtown Austin, Texas. I wanted to get more essence of place than last weeks non-descript track. The skyline of downtown Austin would be awesome. The fog and haze prevented a clear view, but at least my strobes weren’t working overtime like last week.

The runners were coming by from both sides of the road, running an out and back course. So I setup a modified triangle lighting. The flash to left had a 1/4 cto on it, and the middle side light had a blue gel. I should have put a warming gel on the far right side. The middle light was for rim lighting, and at some point I moved it across the street into the same position.

Not having an extra person around this week, I had to self test the light to make sure I had a decent exposure.

I know that David Hobby uses his hand for this type of thing, and I usually do too, but I want to see how the gels would play on my noggin first.

When the guys and gals started their workout, I wanted to go low with a wide-ish angle and get close to get the feel of speed and still get some of the Austin Skyline. It worked okay for a single runner, but for the guys in the groups, the person closest to me would look good and the others would become obscured. The point of these photos is the team, so I switched to my trusty 70-200 and captured the Rogue’s as they came around turn 1.

Lots more from this group to come, including my favorite composite.

EDIT: HERE is the video link from the workout

JB