Yoga! and happy accidents.

Well I'm chugging away here.
I've been pretty busy over the past few weeks.
Between work, friends, family, and the V twin Expo I must say I'm a bit on the tired side.

In the good way.
LOTS going on, and I feel I'm pretty behind on the "Personal Work " side of things....


I did get a chance to work with some cool people from a new integrated care center and made some pretty cool images the day before I left for Cincinnati.

They are a full mind / body wellness center with all sorts of heath care professionals.,Doctors, Nurses, Nutritionists,etc. with a eye on preventative care and maintenance.
Pretty cool people and a little more on the science side of "earthy crunchy".
so after the standard fair Head and Shoulder portraits I set up to shoot some Yoga poses for that section of the center.
They wanted something a little different then the standard person on the mat or on a white seamless. The word silhouette was tossed around.....
the original Yoga instructor/ model was a bit under the weather so one of the people that work at the center got "Volunteered"...
She ran out to her car and grabbed her yoga gear....black bottom, ORANGE top and BLUE mat.

a SAFETY ORANGE on steroids top, not the all black we had intended.
I joked that she could go hunting after yoga class with it...everyone laughed and she said "beggars can't be choosers."
she was pretty nervous but a good sport.
so we set up while she got changed.


For the "silhouette" effect we wanted we set up a basic high key, over exposing the back ground so it's nothing but white using 2 lights aimed into V flats. Then instead of lighting the figure in the foreground.... you don't.
They drop to black with a little wrap around because they are standing in front of a big white reflector. Then you add a Bounce card at the camera position to throw a little light back at your subject to get some detail( like hand positions )back in the inky shadows.

I was totally dreading that orange top on a high key set up... the blue was in the back of my mind...but the orange was definitely in the for front....maybe we make this whole shoot Black and White......


We got her out on the seamless popped a test and...Happy Accident....
the orange did what I thought it would....that is POP!
BAM ORANGE!!!!!

and that gave me an idea.....

so once again when faced with something that will "ruin" your Photo...embrace it. make it part of it...like a reflection you can't get rid of, or the sun is just in the wrong spot....

quick like a bunny I grabbed every white piece of foam core/ reflector I had.
I set up a "bounce box" in front of the V flats to throw as much of the light blasting off the white back ground back at her.

This let me play with the amount of detail that was originally going to be lost in the "silhouette" effect.I played with the distance and position of the reflectors and got them where I wanted them. then we shot quite a few poses.

In post there's just some levels and curves adjustments, a little saturation added, not much really... a bit of dodging and burning here and there and that's how we got these.