November 24th, 2008
Life on the Street – Stock Photo Shoot
One of the photo shoots I did this past weekend was a session portraying a homeless couple. My goal was to create a series of realistic images to be added to my stock photo portfolio.
In the images I had the models dress in several layers of well worn clothing. To further perpetuate the stereotype, I have them a shopping cart filled with belongings. Harley and Diane agreed to model and did an exceptional job in preparing the wardrobe. I was fortunate enough to come across an abandoned shopping cart in a vacant field last month and picked it up in preparation.
For the location, I found a vacant building in an older part of Salt Lake City. This locale suited the purpose extremely well. Parking was close, it had afternoon shade and the sidewalk was a mix of old bricks and smooth concrete.
The primary light source was natural light with fill being provided by an off-camera speedlight shooting through a white umbrella. The off camera light was being triggered via IR from an on-camera speedlight. I shot in Aperture Priority with the fill light set on TTL at an exposure compensation factor of between -2/3 to -1 1/3 f/stop.
I haven’t completed editing the series, but so far I am extremely pleased with the results. The samples shown here have quite a bit more editing/effects than I will apply to the final stock images, but I wanted to give a bit more “edge” to them to see how they would look.
With the current state of the global economy, I have hope that these images will unfortunately be good sellers.
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens – 1/50 second, f/4, ISO 100