Colorado Riverside Portraits

Last week I went on a river trip down the Colorado River through Ruby Horsthief canyons. The trip was a farewell trip for some good friends that are moving away from our community to Texas. On the evening of our last day I made everyone on the trip pose for a riverside portrait. The gallery below is the result.

How I Made the Images

By waiting for the evening to make these photographs I gained several advantages. Cocktails were flowing, so I had much more willing subjects. Next, the low angle of the evening light beautifully light the sandstone walls of the canyon down river while putting our area of the river into open shade. This open shade gives me great control over the lighting of my models by using a strobe.

By using a SB800 strobe with a shoot-through umbrella to light the subjects at full exposure I get a proper exposure on the models. I placed the light above and camera right to mimic the position of the sun as it is seen on the canyon walls behind. The one stop underexposed ambient light saturates the sunlit canyon walls behind and appears as the shadow areas on the models. This creates depth and dimension to the models with a striking background.

Chasing Wildflowers Flowers and a Storm

I spent all day Sunday up in the Colorado high country looking for wildflowers. If you live in Colorado you already know that July is when the wildflowers really start to appear up in the high alpine meadows. You also know that this year we have been getting a lot of rain. What I found was that the wildflowers are just starting to appear and that it is still raining.

I was really only able to make two photographs that I was happy with before the rains began. The firs is the above image of a storm moving in on me. I was able to catch one of the many bolts of lightning the storm was producing. I have never really had much success photographing lightning in the past. It seems to me there is a lot of luck involved. I sure wish I had one of these nifty little Lightning Trigger devices.

The other image I made before the storm photo. It is the only wildflower image I made the whole day. It is this image of a columbine, the Colorado state flower.

The technique I used to make this image is an experimental one for me. It was taken near noon and in full harsh sunlight, not my choice light for flowers. I made it by underexposing the sky one full stop. I then used my 5-in-1 collapsible reflector disk to block the direct sun that was hitting the columbine. I then used my strobe to build the light back up on the flower. By shooting the strobe through the reflector used in it's diffuser mode I was able to add soft diffuse light to the flower bringing it up to a proper exposure.