Photograph Number One

Mangum Manor Civic Group - Parent's Group Founding Members, a photo by killy on Flickr.

This is the beginning of what i hope will become a regular project for me: photographing the happenings and interesting folks of my neighborhood for the civic club. Photos and their accompanying stories will be placed on our neighborhood's website. What is in it for me? Practice, portfolio building and a lot of local marketing for myself as photographer.

Photo number one is of the founding members of the Mangum Manor Parent's Group, Krista Ledman and Carolina Chavez.

I think what makes me happiest about this portrait is that it doesn't look excessively lit when in fact, this is a three light shot: the first is a 9x12 DIY softbox camera right, up high; the second is a DIY ring light on camera axis for fill; and the third is just behind the tree shooting into Krista's back providing just a bit of rim light on her hair.

Having spent most of the day staring at the portfolio of Dan Winters, I initially went into this thinking of something far more dramatic, but changed my mind once i started setting up in Krista's backyard. I tried to keep in mind that these were the founding members of a mother's group, not a girl punk band called "Mother's Group".

Lessons learned?

1. SANDBAGS. I had a stand with my Vivitar 285 and my DIY softbox fall over twice. Luckily, no serious damage, but yeah, SANDBAGS.

2. Having the lighting flexible enough for your subjects to move around is a big plus when you have an already uncomfortable model. More dramatic lighting would have forced Krista to stand in a certain way/place and i would have lost her much faster than i eventually did.