The Last Shoots of 2024 - Brennen and Joey (Brennen First)

After my last shoot with Nancy, I moved my lights to the back of the studio, packed my gear, and took a week-long break from shooting. I did a bit of editing, evaluated what I had recently shot, and ordered a new background. I also broke out a few more outfits for my next couple of shoots, prepped shoot plans, charged batteries, formatted storage cards, and printed the necessary model releases. 

When shoot day arrived, I packed my gear and headed to the studio. Floofie had informed me that she would be shooting that morning, and she was wrapping up her shoot when I arrived. The Christmas background still hung as Floofie was using it for her remote shoot, so it took very little time to set up for the first model on my agenda, Brennan. 

Now, if you know Bree, you know that she is hilariously outspoken, brash, and brooks no nonsense. She's a very experienced model with a heart of pure gold. I try to shoot with her whenever she's in Portland. I don't always get the chance, but I've shot with her enough that we work very well together, so we got right to it.

I had a plethora of outfits to shoot with her, and she even brought a few of her own. Because we've shot so often, we actually ran through the outfits pretty quickly and finished our shoot a bit early. Bree kept a running conversation going throughout the shoot as is her wont, and I really enjoyed catching up with her. She had a shopping trip planned with Floofie, so when we finished she headed off to see her, while I swapped out the background with the new one for my next shoot with Joey. 

The lighting setup for all my shoots this month was similar. My normal lighting setup is a beauty dish with a diffuser sock as a key light and a 60-inch umbrella as a fill light set about a stop lower than the key. I usually add a hair or rim light on a high stand to separate the model from the background. Sometimes I'll use my Newwer LED panels for lighting, but only to supplement the ambient light from windows. 

For all the shoots in December, I decided to go with much softer light to better emulate the weaker winter sun. For this setup, I used a 60-inch octobox with an interior panel as a key light, a 30x60-inch softbox for fill, and a 10x36-inch strip box on a high boom for a rim light. You can decide for yourself if the lighting worked or not. 

2021

Joey in 2021

When summer break (and my freedom from school arrived) I was sure I'd be able to get out and do some glamour work, but if you read my last post you'll already know that the shoots I was able to accomplish were done before the summer break. No one was going anywhere that year - we were wearing cloth masks and gloves to go to the grocery stores to survey the sparsely stocked shelves and very limited and rationed supplies of toilet paper, paper towels, and sanitizer. Models adapted and remote shoots became a process. It was not a great summer. 

When the school 2020 -2021 school year the school district was far more prepared and the online school work was far more structured and interactive and we all became super proficient with Zoom meetings and submitting lessons online. Those lessons included written assignments, videos, photos and believe it or not, nature walks. The lessons were time consuming, starting at 8:30 am and finishing up usually after 5 pm. Of course, everyone was still social distancing and very few, if any, models were posing in person. In December, when vaccines became available, I hoped things would get back to normal, but the limited supply meant younger, healthy people (like models) were the lowest priority and so for modeling and glamour photography nothing changed. 

Bree Summer 2021

Fortunately, as 2020 segued into 2021 vaccines became more and more available and in the summer near the end of the school year, things were looking a lot better for glamour. I managed to get five shoots done in the summer of 2021 - examples of which you can see in this post. Only one of the shoots was with a new model, Cat, but three of my favorites came to my rescue with their willingness to shoot. 

Unfortunately, in the late summer, early fall, the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus became predominant and out of an abundance of caution, my family decided I would continue to coach my granddaughters until at least Christmas, and then until Spring Break, and then, ah, heck, just finish the school year. Now, I won't say things are back to normal by any means. Vaccines and boosters are readily available to those who need and want them, and while I try to be apolitical in my blogging, the anti-vax idiots are keeping the virus dangerous with by incubating new mutations of the virus in their bodies, and yes, continuing to fill up hospital beds and morgues. 2022 is looking a lot better, though and I've been shooting pretty steadily for the past few weeks. More about that in my next post.

Cat

Joey in September

Floofie (Kira) in her Studio

Busy Shoot Week

Graffiti Girl (Joey Darke)

After my adventure with Danielle and Naked Santa, I returned to Sauvie with Joey Darke, one of my regular models. Joey is always a joy to shoot, and Tuesday morning's shoot with her was a pleasure, despite the light rain we experienced throughout the morning.  Joey loved shooting in the mist and rain, and I'll have to say she managed to create some wonderful poses and didn't seem to get cold at all.

To our benefit, Tuesday was warmer and far less windy than Monday's shoot, though that didn't allow us to effectively use the silk veils I brought with us.  I like to have the model hold them in the wind and let them stream behind them.

We wrapped up after about two hours of shooting since I had commitments for the afternoon and we had gotten plenty of great images by that point.

The next day I met Brennan in Cathedral Park for a quick shoot. Despite having visited Portland many times, Bree had never before shot in the park and I was delighted to provide her with that experience. It's a lovely park and great for shooting glamour and fashion.  The weather turned out much better than forecasted, though it was a bit cool since we were shooting in the morning to beat the crowd.

We spent a couple of hours meandering around the park shooting in the various dresses Bree and I had brought with us. The transient population in the park has increased over the past year and we had to adjust our shooting locations a bit to avoid capturing others in the shots, but all in all we had a lovely little photographic expedition.

I have quite a bit of editing to do for Merrique the rest of this week and then a shoot in Maupin this weekend.  After that a break from shooting for a while and chance to catch up on some editing, I hope.

Bree under the bridge.

On the Trail