The Recent Work of April

April was a very busy month for me, I basically had something to do every weekend.  We had engagement portraits, 2 weddings, and the First Annual Magic City Black Expo; of which, I am a proud sponsor.  Here are a few of my favorites from the past month.  I really need to update more regularly...

Cocktails and Glamour: First Make Up Bar Shoot

So, do to the overwhelming popularity of the Housewives of Atlanta, my brother and sister through my wife and ourselves decided to try our hands at hosting a make-up bar.  With my brother and sister's make up line as the showcase we had a small gathering of about 15 women come together, get made over, and had a very brief photoshoot with yours truly.  Since weddings is my main thing, I had to rig some stuff together to make it work, and honestly, some equipment additions are sorely needed.  We had no remotes o we had to slave everything using bounced on camera flash.  no boom stand so my spouse had to hand hold some of the lighting as well as contribute to most of the creative ideas.  Lighting consisted of one Alien Bees ABR800 with small moon unit [off camera] as main and key light, and two bare White Lightning X1600's rear and to the sides providing some very uncontrollable rim lighting.  I cursed alot in my mind as flash slaves didn't see the on camera flash.  I prefer a narrower depth of field so I tend to use ND filters to open up more, but I've only gotten one for the new kit [77mm for the 70-200], so when switching lenses, I'd often forget to close my aperture down to F14-16.  Anyway, here are a few sample shots.

Annie and Kevin Wedding

This is the first wedding shot with the new rig.  My wife was given the task of using the D90 setup and we rented from www.cameralensrentals.com in order to have a second rig.  The second rig cost us $255 and consisted of: a Nikon D300 body, a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 AFS VR, a Nikon 17-55 f/2.8, and a Nikon SB-600.

This is our first experience capturing a wedding with hispanic culture along with african american culture.  The people were very nice and accommodating with us and made us feel as part of the family attending the wedding not hired help.  A great experience!  What I realized I missed after the gels I used to have to balance the on camera strobes with the available light source.  So here are some sample shots. 

PS, I apologize that the post is kinda from end to beginning, but what's done is done.