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Best of - Portraits

One of the great joys of the year for me is the chance to turn out any inspiring portraits for the newspaper. Be it sports stars, bands, general people or whatnot.

Not every shot warrants tons of planning and perfect execution, but four of them stood out for me this year and here are three of them. (The 4th was one of my top five for the year, and you'll see those in a later blog).

Jason Palmer/Times Record News
Rider sophomore basketball players Ashley Zimpel, Lauren Haley and Sammy Hislop (left to right) take the court for the Lady Raiders this season. Photographer Jason Palmer used an advanced photoshop technique to blur bottom half of photo.

Sometimes, you never know what kind of background you are going to find at a location for a good shoot. Usually with sports, a painted wall with their team colors works just fine....

That's exactly what I found when I shot these girls for the basketball preview. Sure, I would have liked something more polished like if they'd have their game jerseys on... but hey, can't have everything perfect right?

Once I got back to the office, I decided that I wanted to try something cool I had seen in another photographer's work... the 1/2 out of focus look. I thought that it would be pretty cool and work well with this type of shot.

Jason Palmer/Times Record News
City View High School softball players Krysten Long, Montiel Bruce, Kayla Long, Amanda Bradley and Molly Kimball. (left to right) look to sent the Lady Mustangs back into the playoffs again this year.

Sticking with the idea of trying something totally different for me... I used a ring flash technique on this one.

Basically... I used 4 flashes and using various clamps and brackets I positioned all 4 of them around the lens to create a kind of spotlight look. I never did quite get it perfectly dialed in and felt bad for taking too long with the girls.

I wasn't sure if the shot would look as good as it does, so I was pleasantly suprised when I got back to the office and it looked great. Sometimes lucky and good work better than at other times.

Jason Palmer/Times Record News
Wichita Falls band Lycergus members Brandon Arnold, Rusty Holcomb, Tyson Arnold and Jason Cooper (left to right).

This shot is probably my fave. band shot I've ever done though... and it's all about the background and attitude. These guys are probably the nicest rock band members you could meet, and they were thrilled when I told them the idea I had.

I scouted around downtown for an hour or so before I decided on this parking garage... mainly because of the cool light filtering in from the open bricks behind them. I knew that I could control that light and balance it with a off camera flash that would throw the right attitude into the shot.

Once I showed them the shot on the back of my camera, they were totally loving it. And every time I've seen any of them out and about in the community, they always have come up and said hello and thanked me for the time I took to make them look good.

Posted by Jason Palmer at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)