Design Your Mind

I must say it has been a long time since I felt butterflies in my stomach. Playing in many bands and being on stage for a good portion of my life could not have prepared me for my first official photo shoot with a band that I truly admire and respect. This weekend I had the privilege of shooting my friends Alex and Tom from the band The Crash Engine, a local hard rock band.

The boys had a few ideas for the shoot but it was basically up to me to fill in the blanks and make their ideas come full circle. We headed out to North Portland (Mississippi District) in a hurry because we were running low on light. Alex and Tom wanted to use a tagged wall they found for their first location that read “Leaving hipster-ville. See you next time”. To be honest when I first saw the site I was puzzled as to how I was going to light Alex and Tom while still making the wall interesting. More importantly I wondered how I was going to power my lights. I ended up asking the Spanish speaking homeowner from the house behind the tagged wall if I could run extension cords from his front porch. He had no clue what I was talking about but agreed anyway.

Fumbling over my lights and camera from my nerves, I managed to come up with a solution that complimented both the guys and the tagged wall. I set an AB800 with a shoot through umbrella to the right of the camera and another AB800 directly to the left to add a sort of rim. With the lights at 1/1 ratio I set my camera to ISO100 f/10 at 1/125, and the shooting began. I was surprised at the results of this lighting configuration which gave me a confidence booster (Hey, maybe I can do this).

By the time our first location was spent of photos we had completely ran out of sun light. It was officially night time and there was no point in shooting the other location. I suggested that we head over to my school’s studio for the remainder of the shoot to salvage the time we had left. This turned out to be smart choice for me because I can better control the light in my school’s studio and still give Alex and Tom some great looking photos.

The lighting configuration I used in the studio was text book. I had an AB800 suspended above the guys with a beauty dish center of the camera. Then an AB800 left and behind with a green gel along with my EX580II pointed towards the backdrop. Pretty standard but effective. This setup lent its self to be very versatile and gave me plenty of great shots of Alex and Tom to choose from.

After the last shot was taken we headed out to McMenamins for a burger and a few brews and that was the end of my first official photo shoot. Please, if you have any questions/comments let me know.

See you around,
Aaron Trigg

Feel free to click on any of the pictures to get a better look

Recently for class I had been asked to take a local business and create a completely different identity. Because I am new to the Portland area I don’t really have any connection that would allow me to do such a project but conveniently my sister has a small jewelry line that she runs out of her house. She was a perfect candidate for this project. For the project I must create a series of postcards, a brochure, a two color newsletter and a catalogue. Everlasting, my sisters jewelry line, couldn’t have been a better choice for this collection of collateral.

One major obstacle for this project is getting some convincing photos of my sisters jewelry. I knew I had to take the matter into my own hands and learn the proper way to photograph small objects. So I took to the Internet and found some great tutorials on YouTube.com. There I found a series of videos that guided my shoot. I feel that the solution that arouse was a perfect fit and complimented the jewelry line.

Below is the lighting configuration I decided to use. There are two AB800s shooting 1/2. One above the light table and the other below the light table. I would have rather used a soft box instead of my umbrella but I did not have that luxury at this shoot. On the light tables top I have two reflectors folded in such a way that it bounces the light directly back at the jewelry. Then I cut a hole in a piece of Bristol and shot the photographs through that hole. That shoot through piece of Bristol added a very nice highlight to the front of the jewelry pieces.

In the examples notice all the beautiful highlights that are created with this configuration. I was ecstatic when I saw the results on my tiny camera screen. I found myself bracketing a stop down and a stop up for good measure.

I hope my sister likes the pictures along with the final output of the project. This should hopefully get her little business off the ground and running. Feel free to check out her site Everlasting if you like what you see.

I’ll see you around,
Aaron James Trigg