I think sometimes you have to celebrate your challenges and failures along side of your victories. This session was a challenging one across the board. Ruby and I may have locked in this shoot over a month ago, but a week ago she let me know that she just wasn’t feeling as energetic as usual and wanted to take things a bit more low-key than the costume shoot we had planned.
Cool. No problem. I’m here to do the work. I don’t care all that much what I’m doing, as long as I’m doing it. Also I prefer to test new equipment on more “low stakes” shoots anyway (not to brag, but most of the time I really do like being a photo industry secret agent and getting to play with pre-release toys…this will come back to bite me in just a few seconds).
I’m not sure what happened this time around, but I think I was fighting my equipment from the first frame. My first mistake was thinking I could use good quality lights with a poor quality modifier. I’m spoiled I guess with having access to better equipment, but I still can’t believe I can notice a difference with something I relied on not too many years ago. However, that was only the first battle. No matter what troubleshooting I did I kept having blank frames where my strobes just didn’t fire. I have some troubleshooting to do, and even though I’m happy with what we ended up getting, I’m still a little disappointed we had to cut things short (even if it did mean we did get more time mobbing around a new antique store and Target for the afternoon).
Godox Octabox
Devo (and Adryana) (Cinder) - 2021.
When I started this project and the first couple of photos made their way online, my hair gal Adryana reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to consider her cat Cinder as part of the project. And of course I said yes because I love Cats more than I love most things.
When we met up on the day both Adryana and Cinder were both feeling a little camera shy. However thankfully for the sake of the project cat-daddy-Devo was happy to step in and help us make the best of the afternoon.
Cinder was such a ham with an expressive face, and aside from being afraid of my flash equipment the afternoon was full of pets and crunchy-treats.
Nathan and Sara (Bishop and Church) - 2020.
Nathan and Sara were some of the first friends I made after I moved to Atlanta in 2010. At the time Nathan was DJ-ing at a club where his wife Sara was bar-tending her way through her Doctorate. The first time Nathan and I actually “spoke” to each other was after a Friday night event on the same week I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed.
His Facebook message poked fun at the fact that I mostly sat by myself not paying attention to anyone in particular, and it wasn’t until I let him know of the recent dental surgery that we started the first part of our friendship. Flash forward sometime later and Sara invited me over to their home at the time, where Nathan and I got into (no shit) a 3 hour conversation about the “Terminator” franchise of movies. We’ve been close ever since.
I’ll get into it more when the time comes, but for now please enjoy the first steps into a long term project “Cats who live with my Frinds”
Let Me Take Your Picture - Episode 2
Nathan & Sara (Bishop & Church)
At the end of the podcast I mention how much Church is just done with all of us and has retreated to the blanket fort, below are a few extra photos of that as it actually happened.