Dave Block Photography » Portrait

The other kind of senior portraits

dsblock — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:23:31 +0000

Over the holidays I spent some time with family on the East Coast, and one of the things I wanted to do while I was there was shoot formal portraits of my parents. Like all of us, I have a lot of pictures of my parents but they’re all very casual. I wanted to make some real portraits, with an eye towards black and white prints, that would really capture them as they are. Yes, as my mother said when she saw them, “who are those wrinkly people?” – these photos show age. My parents are in their 70′s. They show character as well, and time, and travel, and a lifetime of experience. That’s what I really wanted to capture in these images.

Santa Fe Workshops – Portraits

admin — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:13:06 +0000

I took a little break to do some learning last week – spent 4 days in Santa Fe at a portrait workshop taught by Austin-based photographer Michael O’Brien. Michael has photographed everyone from Bill Cosby to Willie Nelson, and has a distinctive style of portraiture and lighting that he shared with us over the course of the workshop. It was a fantastic 4 days – learned a lot, pushed myself creatively, and overall was really impressed with the quality of the Santa Fe Workshops experience. Some of my best shots from the workshop below.

Gabrielle

admin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:23:32 +0000

This month marked another big inflection point in life – after 2 years away from the corporate world, I decided to get back on the hamster wheel and resume the furious spin. I found a great job and I think it’s really going to be something I like, but it was a hard decision. Bottom line, being an artist is romantic and cool, but it doesn’t pay the bills…

The tradeoff to being a working photographer was doing a lot of photography that was, well, work. Shooting tons of events that all started to run together and all you shot was “grips and grins” without any creativity involved was turning my passion into a chore. I did get the opportunity to see and do some interesting things, as well as meet some great people, but I’m not going to miss parts of that particular job.

So now I get to choose what I shoot. I’m going to continue to shoot weddings and build my business there, because I really enjoy wedding photography. I’m going to keep shooting portraits of all kinds, because I love working with people and making them look their best. I’m going to continue to make beautiful images, because it gives me a profound joy that is different than any other passion I’ve ever had in my life.

In that vein, highlights from a recent shoot with Gabrielle. Enjoy.

Baby Lauren

admin — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 18:31:18 +0000

Some images from a newborn shoot I did about 3 weeks ago – Lauren was two weeks old for this session. She behaved beautifully during the shoot – she slept most of the time and when she woke up gave up some beautiful shots with her eyes open. Proud parents Tony and Carrie were right at hand with bottles, blankets, and diapers as needed to keep everything calm and smooth. Technical notes – we shot this all with window light, mostly at f1.4 or f1.8, with a couple of white cards for fill as needed.

Angela

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:03:07 +0000

Last week I shot with Angela, an aspiring actress and martial artist. She was great to work with and a lot of fun to figure out how to light and pose for what we were trying to do – we wanted to create some shots that were both dramatic and sexy but also showed her athleticism. It took me a while to figure it out, but by the end of the shoot it clicked that she reminded me quite a bit of Linda Hamilton.

These were all shot in my studio (i.e., my living room with all the furniture moved out), with either two or three strobes and a couple of different sets of softboxes and reflectors. Results below.

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Pet portraits, how I’ve missed you…

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 17:33:55 +0000

I haven’t posted any pet portraits in a couple of months – I’ve been shooting other things – but I did a quick session this morning with my favorite pet model, Baron. I’ve got another session in the catalog from last fall that I need to write up a quick blog post about, but that’ll be for another another day. For now, I thought I’d share this one.

Recent Work

admin — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:52:17 +0000

December’s been a busy month! Lots of events and holiday parties to shoot – a good time of year to be a photographer. In between the Santa shoots it’s always good to do some shooting that’s about art rather than events or commerce – keeps your creative juices flowing. Here’s a couple of shots from this month…

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Emily in the Rain

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:47:28 +0000

Fall’s here in full force in Seattle which means it’s cool and wet most days. I’ve lived here 5 years now and I’ve adopted the natives’ obliviousness to rain – you pretty much simply go about your business, indoors or out. It does make outdoor shoots a lot harder though – blue skin looks cool in Avatar but less so on a model.

Despite the weather I did an outdoor shoot last week, designed around a rainy day theme – umbrellas and jumping in puddles were part of the plan. Because of the rain, we left the big strobes in the car and shot everything with a single off-camera SB900 flash – some shots with a small softbox, others with a grid. Knocked down the ambient light to create a moody feel and went for dramatic light and shadow in most of the shots. Emily was great to work with – not only totally fine with standing around in the rain for a couple of hours on a cold, wet afternoon, but a model who can visualize what the shot is going to look like and add to the process is so much easier and enjoyable to work with. Shots below.

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New Senior Shots

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:41:10 +0000

Fall is senior season – two weeks ago I had a chance to do a portrait session with best friends Kelsey and Kyla on a gorgeous fall afternoon. The girls were great, the weather was fantastic, and the shoot was just a lot of fun. It was definitely one of the good days when everything clicks and portraits seem easy – huge props to the girls for bringing great attitudes and energy and having a good time with their afternoon.

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Garage Meetup

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:06:07 +0000

Seattle has a pretty active Flickr community – about 2,800 members – and the group does a lot of get-togethers on a pretty regular basis. About every 6 months, the group puts together a lighting workshop type of meetup where people with equipment share their toys and knowledge with people who are interested in learning more about off-camera lighting. Some people show up with small flashes, some with studio strobes – there’s a little bit of everything, and you never really know what it’s going to be like until you get there.

The latest meetup was Sunday night, and it was a lot of fun. Lots of interested people, lots of models to work with, and because we’re getting close to Halloween, a course some interesting and fun costumes to shoot. I ended up doing more teaching than shooting at this one which was great – always good to share a little bit of what you know, not that I am a lighting guru or anything

I did get to shoot a bit with a couple of the models – best shots below. Cheers.

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