Emily at Woodlawn Park

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.

Monroe Wall with Russ the Model

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

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