#meetupiara

This past Saturday I attended a meet up hosted by Ashleigh, yes Ashleigh who I worked with last week. The drive over from Los Gatos was long and tiring, because of the heavy beach traffic. After spending more time finding parking and walking over from the boardwalk, I finally made it to the location. Ashleigh was by far the most prepared meet host I have seen, with a sign in desk, changing tent and multiple products for models to use.

 

I did not start shooting right away because of the harsh sunlight(the meet up started 2 hours before sunset). So I just sat and relaxed for a while, helped Danielle with a couple photos before even thinking of the first ones I'd take. 

Taylor was the first model I worked with, who I hadn't worked with before the meet. The flowers in the photo above were really dense and nice to lean against. Steven came in with the assist, which I did not realize I needed until seeing the photos in Lightroom.

Managed to sneak in a photo of Ashleigh.

Steven crossing the river to shoot where the reflection was much clearer. We didn't end up shooting on that side because he was the only one to cross.

After shooting a bit more with Taylor, then just sitting and talking to other creatives, I picked up the powdered chalk and worked with Deny on a few shots. The chalk did not work the way I thought it would, but the after effect was amazing. The colors were nice and bold in the sunset light. 

Met Danielle towards the end of the meet. Took out my light strings along with a couple from other creatives, whose names I cannot remember(sorry D:). The boardwalk in the back created a really good amount of bokeh along with the light strings in the foreground. 

A Breath of Fresh Air

I spent my day working on my final assignments for school. Locked up staring at my computer screen for hours. Luckily, I had already planned to go out for a drive to see the sunset up on Russian Ridge. By leaving a half hour before golden hour, I got to enjoy sun rays passing through the trees on my way up 

Seeing this stretch of road nicely lit in combination with dust that was thrown up by passing cars led me to pull over. The bicyclists showed up as I was leaving, almost missed the shot too because of a car passing close to the same time. 

The view from the top facing out towards the North Bay. Since I only brought telephoto lenses, the only way to capture the rays correctly was to do a stitched panoramic. 

After sitting on one of the rocks and looking at the sunset, I couldn't let the light go to waist. I set up my tripod for a self-portrait. Taken with 20s timer, taking 9 shots with a .5s interval after the initial one. Of all the shots, I feel like this one really captured me taking in the view. 85mm for a good amount of compression, it was also the only portrait lens I brought with me. 

And your cliche sunset photo to end the day. 

Location:

Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve

Shooting with Dani & Ashleigh

In my opinion, one of the best parts of social media is the ability to connect with people that you would not have met otherwise. This past Sunday I met up with Dani and Ashleigh to do a photoshoot for Ashleigh's product line. This was my first time working with Ashleigh and the second time shooting with Dani. 

 

I always like going into a shoot with one goal in mind to improve my photos. For this shoot, I had my mind on taking photos that would both show her products while keeping my artistic photo style. Also, I tried to offset Dani when I could to prevent all of my photos from having her in the center. 

DSC_8424.jpg

Dead space isn't always a bad thing, sometimes it allows your subject to breathe. 

Quick snapshot in between moving location to a different part of the beach. Wish I would've gotten at least a couple of portraits of Ashleigh(on the right).

And a couple of behind the scenes shots taken by Ashleigh. Two things to note: I like to stay low and I like to use a messenger bag to switch lenses. I shoot with almost exclusively prime lenses, so I constantly move around or switch between lenses. 

The final photo of a quick but very productive shoot. 

 

Location: Panther Beach, Davenport

Model:

instagram.com/dani.des

Products:

iarabikini.com

instagram.com/iarabikini