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Archive of ‘Studio’ category

Commercial, Event, Fashion, Headshots, Photography, Portrait, Studio | 0 comment

Speed of Life – Model Shoot

Ashburn, Virginia

In January, I photographed a project with Kyle McKay from MXK Productions. Mehr and Kyle had a styled shoot based around the song, Speed of Life by David Bowie. In light of his recent death, the shoot was styled with inspiration from his song. Being that I was not available to go to the studio with the production, I did a behind-the-scenes look at them getting ready. However, I was able to setup a small headshot lighting setup to get a quick preview for what was to come later.

Mehr Bano was the primary make up artist that worked on the production. Since there were so many models that had to be done before leaving for the studio, there was a tight schedule to finish. In that case, I photographed as much of the action as it happened. The hair styling, makeup, henna, clothing – there was a lot going on in particular after the basics were done.

Small Headshot Lighting Studio

Whenever a model was ready for the camera, I brought them to a mobile lighting setup that I brought with me. With the limited space, it was one light only. With a black background, I love how these turned out. This shoot was produced in the hope that they would be published. Best of luck to everyone that helped to make it happen!

Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media
Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media
Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media
Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media
Model with henna applied ©TimeLine Media
Model with henna applied ©TimeLine Media
Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media
Speed of Life photo shoot with MXK Productions ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Commercial, Fashion, Headshots, Photography, Studio | 0 comment

Kyle McKay Headshots

Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media
Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media

Studio Shoot

Since I have an upcoming group fashion shoot, I wanted to revisit a solo session from last year. The first time I met Kyle McKay, he was a model at a fashion show in Springfield, Virginia. At this time, I was very new to photographing fashion shows. While there may be a lot of events in the area, I ran into Kyle at a couple of them as he worked hard at gaining experience. In getting to know him, he was very ambitious in pursuing more fashion projects, though he was collaborative with everyone involved. So when I wanted to expand by studio portfolio, I reached out to him.

Kyle McKay professional headshots ©TimeLine Media
Kyle McKay professional headshots ©TimeLine Media
Kyle McKay professional headshots ©TimeLine Media

In the time since we last saw each other, Kyle and his friend, Mehr started a styling and makeup company, M&K Productions. When we planned to do a portfolio shoot, both of them came to the studio. Mehr worked her makeup talents to create a professional look for his headshots. Initially, these were a great example of their professional styling. For executives that need updated professional portraits, this look is nicely even.

Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media

After making some ‘standard’ headshots, I had what I needed for my portfolio. Since we had time, I asked Mehr if she wanted to do something crazy. Because they also have a theatrical painting service in their company, she asked if she could really do something crazy. Of course, I said, ‘Yes!’ So she created this blackbird-inspired look on Kyle’s face. This is a markedly different look from his professional headshot!

Conceptual fashion headshots with Kyle McKay photography shoot ©TimeLine Media

Lastly, I changed up the background with lighting. The black background was working, but sometimes his hair would get lost. When I asked the room for suggestions, red was the consensus! So I put a red gel on a flash, and put it on the background. It was a really enjoyable shoot with these two, and I look forward to future shoots together! If you have any ideas that you would like to work on, please contact me. I am looking for more collaborations in the studio!

Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media
Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media
Conceptual fashion headshots photography shoot ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Photography, Studio, Technology | 0 comment

Working with Lightroom Catalogs – Tech Thursday

©TimeLine Media - US Capitol Building, Washington, DC

Adobe Lightroom is the best photo editing software available today. At this time it has support of all the major camera manufacturers and is best suited to handle professional RAW files from digital cameras. Many of my Tech Thursday articles have talked about working in the program, but I want to post today about the backend of working with Lightroom, specifically Catalogs. These are files that have the “.lrcat” extension. There are different strategies for working with these files, but I wanted to show you how I work with them to keep things organized, and to keep your hard work safe from potential data loss.

Catalogs in Lightroom

With this in mind, I create a new catalog file for every big event that I photograph. If it is a wedding, I will create a new catalog “brides_name__grooms_name.lrcat”, if it is a ballroom dance event, I will make a catalog “year_eventname.lrcat”. Afterwards, I will import only the files from each event into the catalogs, and work with them from there. There are some that will add every image from every shoot into one large catalog. With the metadata searching power of the Library, I can see the advantage of doing this. According to Adobe, there is no limit to the amount of photos you can have in one catalog – some have reported using catalogs with 800,000 images and more!

I separate my shoots into separate catalogs for 2 reasons. The first is that I have experienced catalog corruption when working with some Lightroom catalogs. In these cases, there was some data errors in the lrcat file which prevented the file from being opened! All of the edits from that event  with ~1200 photos were lost, and had to be redone. What if that were to happen in a catalog with 800,000+ photos! From then on, I have clicked the “Automatically write changes into XMP” under Catalog Settings so that if a catalog was corrupted, the work would be saved in the XMP sidecar files along with the RAW files, and the catalog could easily be recreated. Let me know if you have any tips with working on your Lightroom catalogs.

Enough with the geeky talk, here’s a pretty photo. The Capitol building will need major renovations which are scheduled to begin later this year. Here is a late afternoon photo before all of the scaffolding goes up. Enjoy!

©TimeLine Media - US Capitol Building, Washington, DC
©TimeLine Media – US Capitol Building, Washington, DC

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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