The shoot went flawlessly and the final came out beautifully.  All we need to do is get it printed up!

Please do go look at the large version of the shot over on Flickr to get the full effect!

The individual shots.

And some outtakes

Strobist Info:
All lighting was attained using 2 Cross Lit Yongnuo YN460s with white umbrellas.

Lunch was at the delicious Pokéz and we proceeded to wander around looking for an optimal place to shoot. We settled on a fine spot right on the trolly tracks where we had no chance of a car creaming us and we could see for hundreds of yards on the trolly track so we figured we were safe.  We were just about done when this Transportation Authority comes flying up with his lights on and nearly screeches to a stop next to our gear.  He hops out of the car and meant business.  Little did he know that we were web developer geeks and didn’t even know we were up to no good  Seriously, if you look closely at the picture you can see some body roll in the car, this guy was really flying!

He inquired (to put it nicely) about our permit to shoot on the tracks and we informed him that we had no idea we were supposed to have one.  He snakily instructed us on the protocol to obtain one for next time.  Once he was done taking our licence info down he had loosened up a bit.  I handed him a card letting him know where to get his next family pictures.  It was almost too ridiculous to describe.

We walked back to the cars laughing about it to find a ticket on Nicks windshield.  So yeah, we live on the edge.  Web developers gone WILD!

The lighting was attained using a single Yongnuo YN460 with a shoot through umbrella on full power and the fabulous Sun as a hair light

We had planned to do the shoot in areas of SD that they were particularly fond of and I had scouted out some great spots earlier in the week.  We met up and to our surprise the area was dry and we only had mildly stormy looking skies.  As we set up for the first scene the wind kicked up and promptly blew in some rain.  We nailed down a few shots and moved to the second location on the other side of the building.  This worked great for Adam and Chelsea as they were in an arch way protected from the elements.  Matt and Myself, not so much…  When I bought by camera bag I noted that it had a sewn in rain flap that hid away in a velcro pouch.  I figured I would NEVER use it here in San Diego.  Turns out it works very well!

By the time we were done shooting that spot it was raining so hard we ended up just getting coffee and waiting for a bit.  Once it cleared we grabbed a few more shots in the area then it was on to this awesome little trashed “neighborhood” (4 houses) that happened to be accessible to us (we know the property owners).  We got there in the dark and decided to clear out the houses before we turned our backs to them for the shoot.  To our pleasant surprise we only found one crazy tweaker who tried to kick us out.  We informed him that we were allowed to be there and he jumped the fence and took off.  He came back once we were done and the police were called.  He ended up in the psyke ward for an evaluation.

The shoot was a lot of fun and my toes are almost thawed out a week of so later.  I learned a lot about technique and shooting in adverse situations.  The pictures came out fabulously so be sure to check out the whole set on Flickr.

Sherry is my wife’s Yoga instructor and she is a champ!  She has a little home studio here in Jamul and she can really bring it from what I hear.  My wife practically comes home limping some times yet still loves it!

While I was setting up a couple lights I was telling Sherry that I never like to “airbrush” people, I like to capture who they really are.  She bluntly told me “Daniel, I have been down a lot of roads in my life and not all of them have been paved”.  Did I mention she is a champ  So here she is, the real Sherry.  I thought she looked great!

I lit Sherry with an Alienbees AB800 Ring Flash and 2 Yongnuo YN460s for hair lights.

Here were the three photos that finally got approved.  Funny that two of them are self portraits.  Anybody want to come model for me any time soon?

The Burmeisters!

Kisses from mom.

Micah showing off.

When on a shoot Adam requires a cool glass of milk!

This one is of Haley Montgomery, a local Diego Artist.  A friend of mine was doing a shoot for her and I volunteered to do the lighting.  I figured it would be good practice to try to light without being behind the camera and observing everything.  It was a lot of unappreciated work but hey I learned a lot  I didn’t take many shots, most of them were light tests, but this one came out particularly sweet.

This one is of yours truly.  I was experimenting with lighting and had a fairly traditional 3 point set up with a background light as opposed to hair light.  I think next time I will light the subject a little more evenly.

This last one was inspired by Eric Curry‘s work.  He is a master of light painting and I aspire to create images as intriguing as his some day.  This particular shot was a composite of 14 exposures at 10 seconds each.  You can read more about it on my Flickr.

I wanted to get some cool pictures of cigar smoke but I found out quickly that the timing was a bit tricky especially doing self portraits with the remote in the dark…  The pictures with the cigar glowing were 6 second exposure with the flash.  The flash went off and I held really still puffing the cigar to get the red glow.

Enjoy!

The shoot was fun, hanging out was great and the massive amounts of Tri Tip and Deer (that Tony shot) were fabulous!

Enjoy the Pictures, you can find the whole set here.