In March I had he pleasure of doing a one on one lighting workshop in Sandpoint, Idaho with Emily Livingston Flint, a talented Nampa, Idaho photographer who owns Studio High in Nampa. I first met Emily while I was covering the 2015 Idaho State Boys Basketball Tournament in Boise. It turned out she was a fan of my lighting style so she inquired about the opportunity to come to come visit the studio and spend a day learning from me and thankfully there was time in my schedule to squeeze it in. For the day I arranged to have Ellie, a fantastic local model, to spend the day with us. Of course my assistant Shayne was on hand as well doing his thing as well.
This was the first time I had worked with Ellie and both Emily and I were completely thrilled with her abilities in front of the camera, she definitely made it very easy for me to focus on teaching and for Emily to focus on learning! We started out with some head shot lighting with a basic grey background.
Then we kept the light set up the same but added in a great Colorsmack backdrop by Silver Lake Photo, these backdrops are great, they are quick and easy to use, I highly recommend them! I talked to Silverlake today and they set up a special discount code for their Colorsmacks, Ultra Colorsmacks and Faux Floors just for my readers. Use the code “DUCHOW20” (case sensitive) to save 20% until June 11, 2015.
Then a little dramatic, sports themed lighting on a black backdrop,. We worked with anywhere from 1 to 4 lights in this set up, I only took a few shots during this set, here is a one with a single light set up showing that you don’t need a lot of lights to create a great effect.
We finished our studio time with a white seamless backdrop and a reflective floor. For the reflective floor we used an inexpensive and easy to find solution using two white, shiny shower panels that I picked up at the local hardware store. At $20-$30 each this is a much more cost effective solution than buying a large sheet of Plexiglas.
After the studio we headed toward Sandpoint, Idaho to take some photos along beautiful Lake Pend Orielle, but first we made a quick stop at one of my favorite old buildings in Priest River for a few urban cowgirl shots.
We began our time at the lake on the west side where we captured a great mix of dramatic clouds and blue skies.
We concluded with a sunset shoot on one of the Eastern shores of the lake which gave us the sunset as our backdrop, as you can see the sunset certainly did not disappoint! In these sunset photos you will see some significant variation in the way the background looks, you would almost think that these were completely different sunsets, but they were all taken at the same place within a very short time span. The reason for the variation comes from the choice lens, focal length and my distance from the subject. The first shots here were taken using a 70-200 mm f2.8 lens, this lens has amazing compression which basically magnifies the background and draws it closer to the subject creating a wonderful effect.
Now notice the difference when I switched to using a wide angle, 17-40 mm f4 lens. Here is one taken at 17 mm.
Now 40 mm.
And a few more shots at various focal lengths.
What a fun day we had, I am thrilled with the images that we were all able to create together and I think Emily went home gaining some new techniques that will immediately impact her work. I leave you now with a few behind the scenes shots from the day.
Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work for www.idahosports.com, The Coeur d’Alene Press, The Bonner County Daily Bee, Priest River Times, Newport Miner, Living Local and a handful of other newspapers and publications.
