Crombie McNeill Workshop with Barrett Palmer Models Mk II - Part 2

Well, it turns out that it was not such a chore to process a great whack of images as it was the last time. This time, I have a lot more interaction images, so I did not have to do nearly as much beauty processing. I also chose to try all sorts of new and different renderings.

To the models: I apologize in advance if I butchered you. To Warren: Can you spot where I "augmented" you :-) ?

Off we go ... I'll go back to chronological order, since I've done a representative sample of images from every one. Doing more at this point would become a tad repetitive. Of course, I have numerous variations on most of these, so I could pound out three or four more of any one series, but I'll leave that to another time.

I started the day working with Charlotte. Kyle and I walked over to one of the equipment sheds / barns with her and worked outside first, then inside. The light outside was ok because it was very cloudy. Unfortunately, I was not quite awake and did not notice Charlotte having taken an awkward pose with her hand against her head at right angles. That wiped the entire series against the fence. (I am not willing any more to process any images that could not grace the pages of a magazine in my opinion. Which says nothing about their actual quality ... you could easily find multiple individuals on several photography forums who would happily testify in court as to my inability to distinguish shit from shinola :-)

All was not lost though, as always I shot some head shots and Charlotte is always stunning in that mode.


After a while, I wandered over to the house with the porch and started shooting Nils. People were again playing with the gold reflector that works so well with Betsy, and I have to say that it does not work well with any other person. At all.

I found a pose I liked but could not tame the golden insanity, so I went to black and white and decided to give Topaz Adjust a crack at it. Not too bad at all in my opinion. Looks like one of those uber-manly men in sport magazines ... or maybe Guns & Ammo :-)


Blythe took the stage (porch) then and we tried some poses against the post. Again, I suspect that there was some reflector action going on because I just could not get a decent reading on the skin. My plugin (SkinTune) was going nuts. So instead I went with a high contrast look that ended up pretty decent I think.


We did some work with Nils and Blythe and then brought Warren into the mix. Here, we had the idea to have Warren and Blythe as a couple and Nils looking on with some form of jealousy, anger, any negative emotion.


I like that. Blythe stands there demure while Warren is enjoying her company and Nils just looks pissed. Exactly what I hoped for.

When that session was done, I asked Warren to pop over to the hay stacks and see what we could get. I didn;t really like any of those, but then Warren and Betsy rattled off a great series of images. Young farmer and sophisticated girl interacting while he works. Something like that.

I especially liked this with the relaxed couple-hood.


Followed by one where they look exude confidence and indifference. I love that kind of GFY message.


Here we see a bit of chemistry ...


Kyle, Nils, Betsy and I ended up behind the porch house shooting in the shade at this point. Nils sat down against the wall at our request and that didn't really work at all, except we got this extremely cute image of Betsy looking guilty of something, perhaps getting him utterly stoned as the look on his face might suggest :-)


But then we got them standing together and wow ... serious chemistry. There is a theme here ... Nils leads the parade for chemistry. Serious testosterone or something :-)


Looks like they were interrupted.


I'd call that rather protective.

After a while, we went to play at the teeter totters and Betsy kindly volunteered to be suspended in the air with a very short dress on. I stepped on the other end for 10 or 15 minutes while Alyssa and Kyle shot away (I think maybe Daphne was there too, but my brain hurts trying to remember everyone I shot with.)

Then it was my turn and I was chagrined to note that it took two others to hold her up ... hmmm ...

Betsy got pretty playful up there and I snagged this great image of perfectly balanced hands and hair ... wow. She looks like she is falling rapidly ... great stuff.


After the teeter-totters, we walked about 3 feet to catch James and Kassie, two more new models, working the swings. I did not get anything from that session (came very close though) but I did get a nice image from the gas pumps. Unfortunately, this was another one hammered by gold. So I gave this one the wild and woolly black and white treatment too ... and I really like this one.


After the pumps, we tried the old Model A and Model T (I'm going out on a limb here) cars at the garage. They looked great, but the sun was blasting all over them, giving us fits. I eventually captured a nice image of Kassie sitting on a running board. But, of course, I favor head shots ... and this allowed me to do a beauty treatment on her, which I think went nicely.


After that we kind of gave up and wandered off with Warren and Sam. In the fire hall, there's an amazingly lovely old red firetruck. I desperately wanted an image with Sam in front of that grill, but the light really stunk. We blasted some gold on her, but those images don't really really float my boat. I asked her to crouch in front of the grill and captured a few with tough lighting. I decided to try a beauty / soft processing for one of them and it came out alright. I went with deep red for the lips and that might not work ... perhaps someone can let me know.


We gave up on that building and moved next door to the little church. Lovely building, but the windows have this kinky middle frosted pane with a bunch of bright orange pains around them. So the light coming in is simply strange ... again.

But I dropped my exposures to take the back of the church out of play and filled in with a wee bit of flash and got a couple of stunning images of Sam. These really float my boat, although nothing will be able to touch that image I posted yesterday. I still shiver when I think about that one.


Talk about sweet light for black and white .... and here's another, this time with soft processing added.



I then asked Warren to get in the pew behind her and look at her all creepy ... just to see how it worked. I think it's OK as an experiment.


And that wrapped up the day at Cumberland ... we had to leave at 5 on the dot, and apparently we are not welcome back :-) ... the admins were not aware that we were there to take pictures and I believe that they got a tad upset. Oh well ...

Crombie and Paul set up a nice secondary shoot at the beach with five of the models. That was awesome ... we had Betsy, Sam, Nils, Warren and Bryanna. Unfortunately, I have nothing from Bryanna that worked ... she was staring into the sun and her eyes are squinting in all my shots. Which means I struck out completely ... I so apologize.

So ... on to the beach.

Look ... it's Daniel Craig!


Yeah ... maybe that's a bit much ... I added some muscle there ... not that he needs any

Next was Sam, who looked great in sunglasses and then went half blind when they asked her to take of the glasses and face into the sun. I got this shot before that happened. I really like it ... sophisticated lady.


I went with really dark lips again to complement the glasses. And I *really* like how that looks.

Betsy was posing by this time, and it took me a moment to realize that she was trying to keep her jacket from flying open, considering that she had unbuttoned it completely. Marc was working pretty hard to conjure up a huge gust of wind, but alas ... this shot has exactly the kind of expression that Betsy is so great at. Well, she's actually an expression machine. It's kind of amazing to see in action.


Here's another, and the light looked suspiciously augmented again, forcing the black and white treatment. But I quite like it here.


OK ... here it is. This is undoubtedly the nicest image I ever shot and processed. So I repeat it here ...


We adjourned for about half an hour here so the models could do Tequila shots and then get really playful ... (that was a joke in case any of the parents are reading this.)

Sam and Nils went from steamy to silly in two minutes. Impressive :-)


This one complements yesterday's group jumping shot, but this one has the original color in the water.


Anyone who has seen the Mighty Mouse cartoons will recognize this pose ... it's uncanny :-)


See?

:-)

And we cap off this part (and the day) with a sweet moment between Sam and Warren.


An awesome day. Lots of nice images and some really fun ones too. Thanks again go to Crombie McNeill for setting this up (with the able assistance of Paul Johanssen of course) and of course thanks to Barrett Palmer Models for supplying such great talent and finally, thanks to the talent. You guys were amazing. Really.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention again how much fun it is to shoot with the RA fellows and the other photographers who attended. A large group this time (16 I think) and several were new to photography. What a great introduction to light, faces, posing, backgrounds, and so on ...