Merry Christmas everyone! I don’t know about you all, but Christmas felt like it kind of came and went without even a moment to stop and realize what was happening. I kind of felt like it was a surprise party for like ten minutes “Ha! I’m here! okay, party’s over, get back to work.” except I have this week off, so I don’t get back to work… even I’m confused at this point.

Yesterday I got to hang out with my good friend Brian. If you recall Brian is the guy who helped me set up a lighting studio in his house a couple of months back. He’s a great guy that is always willing to show how to use new equipment or how to shoot something to get a slightly different effect. We were hanging out in the “Day-after-christmas-blues” type of day when he asked if I wanted to grab my camera and do some shooting (the answer to that question is always a yes, in case you were wondering), so I drove back to my place, grabbed my 60d with my 85mm lens and headed back to Brian’s. What we ended up doing was taping up a 4 foot section of white background paper to the shadow side of Brian’s house and just started shooting.

Besides the fact that I look like I haven’t slept in 3 days (which I kind of hadn’t, sleeping at my parents almost guarantees a bad night’s sleep) the pictures turned out a lot better than I had expected. the lighting was well rounded, and save for a reflector on the face it’s hard to tell the difference between these type of shots and a studio shot. Luckily for me, Brian had just a reflector on hand

Overall it’s a really nicely lit picture that literally only took about 5 dollars worth of white backdrop. Brian has been setting these style of photos up in public parks and asking strangers if he could photograph them, and he’s yielded some amazing results. I guess all that to say that you can achieve professional looking shots without having a professional setup, all it really takes is some creativity, a few basic necessities, and some beer (if you are so inclined).