Washington DC Engagement Photographer - Katie + Jeff - Johns Hopkins University

Katie and Jeff have an unusual first date/how they met story: Katie won a date with Jeff through some serious basketball skills (both were captains of their college basketball teams) and they wanted to capture that common interest and history in their engagement session. Moshe Zusman and I shot this session at Katie and Jeff's old stomping grounds at Johns Hopkins University, both in the gym as well as around campus. we had some beautiful overcast skies, and couldn't have asked for a better looking, and fun couple to spend the morning with! I took the opportunity to also test out two new pieces of gear, the Pocketwizard MiniTT1 and the LumoPro LP160 (which was triggered using a PWII), both of which worked wonderfully, with minimal hangups. For most of the gym photos, I used the LP160 racked into 105mm and rested it on top of the bleachers at about 45 degrees from where Katie and Jeff were doing their thing. I can't wait for their wedding later this summer! It's going to be at the beautiful Woodend (one of my favorite outdoor venues).

Washington DC Photography Workshops

As a preview of our upcoming workshops (more info on these later) Moshe Zusman, Paul Price, Zhia Victoria, and I had a short "Lighting a Venue" mini-seminar in Moshe's brand new (soon to have it's grand opening) studio space in DC. We had a great turnout of nearly 35 people, and there were some amazing free giveaways, including Pictobook Bijous, Nik software, Eye-fi cards, free print credit through Nations Photolab, and more! Stay tuned for details on the full multi-module seminar coming later this spring!

Fun with Flash and Friends - Cinematic Lighting

One of my friends was starting to put together idea for her project she needed to submit to film schools she was applying for, one of which (for USC) was to submit a series of six photos that told a story. There couldn't be any description of the plot or characters. The entire idea should be easy to understand by simply looking at the images submitted. I offered to help her with her concept of telling a story of...well I'll let you figure it out, since that was the point of the project. She wanted to not only not use words though, she wanted to not even have faces, so we brainstormed sort of a storyboard and shot as close to the waist down as we could. The other criteria of the project was that the images had to not be edited, couldn't even get the slightest brushing in Photoshop, so these images are straight out of camera. We used 5 Nikon speedlights to sculpt the light as much as we could in real life (and shot after dark to avoid having to fight the sun), which took a little while, but was totally worth it.

She got in by the way...