Biltmore House - Ashville, NC

For those of you who have never been to or heard of it the Biltmore House is a 250 room, 34 bedroom, 43 bathroom, 65 fireplace, 174,000 sq ft, 115 year old house in Asheville, North Carolina.  Amazing! You really have to see it to believe it. In fact, a hundreds of people visit the house a day which is why this was one of our more difficult shoots. 

The property was open to visitors on the day of the shoot so in order to make it work we had to shoot at sunrise only had about 2 and a half hours to set-up shoot and break down. On top of that we were shooting outside and it was about 30 degrees that morning. Just as the sun started to rise a heavy fog rolled in pretty much erasing the idea of having the awesome Blue Ridge mountains as a backdrop. Luckily we were able to make the fog work for us. It gave an erie castle feel to the project.

With that in mind here are a couple of tips to help you on your next location shoot:

1. Whenever possible (especially on location) arrange for a walk-thru of your shoot site prior to the day of the shoot.

2. Always try and have a "Plan B".

If you can salvage a shoot you'll really impress your client and they'll always remember that.

Until next time....

Queen Me!

We had a great shoot with some of the new Miss USA state titleholders.  Miss South Carolina USA - Jamie Hill, Miss South Carolina Teen USA - Brittany Pjetraj, Miss North Carolina USA - Andrea Duke, Miss North Carolina Teen USA - Julia Dalton, Miss Louisiana USA - Michelle Berthelot, Miss Louisiana Teen USA Lindsey Evans. There will be  a "Behind the Scenes" dvd of the photo shoot available soon as well as clips on our soon-to-be unveiled new website. Stay tuned for more photos as well.

Shot Detail: Engagement Beach Shoot

Once a month we will be posting an image from a recent shoot along with information about how it was done. (lighting technique, equipment used, exposure setting, etc.) This month we chose an image we posted a couple of months ago.



This photo was taken at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, SC just before sunset. This is one of my favorite lighting techniques to use on the beach. It's a slightly modified version of how I shoot for most of my swimsuit clients. It may be a bit to surreal looking for some, but I love the type contrast and saturation you can achieve from this setup.

The main light source was a Nikon SB800 inside of a medium soft-box to the left of the camera and about 3 feet from the subjects (I can't even begin to describe the home-made contraption I use for that. I promise to post photos of it later). To camera right is a reflector to supply a small amount of fill. The most important aspect of this technique is the sunlight. It acts as the perfect side and hair light as well as a fill light via the reflector.

The first thing I do is get an ambient light reading making sure to use a slow enough shutter speed that will still allow me to be in sync with the off-camera flash. Most pro SLR cameras sync around 1/125 - 1/250. I now set my flash to be 1 stop higher than my first reading.

In photoshop I usually bump up the contrast in the yellow color range just a bit to bring out the colors in the sky.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

JC