Practicing Portraits

Staying Sharp as a Wedding and Portrait Photographer

I’m not day-to-day shooting multiple assignments anymore like when I worked as a newspaper photographer. I train all the time for races and like to apply the lessons learned from all my sweaty workouts to the genteel work of wedding and portrait photography. Chief among the school of exercise being if you don’t workout, you lose your edge and get flabby. I can feel it slipping even after a few days of no pictures.

Sometimes in the spring and summer I like to go on Sunday afternoons to the Big Eddy rapids on the Deschutes River near Bend, Oregon to look for kayakers and shoot what I call Lifestyle Portraits. For some reason unknown to me the often run the rapids on Sunday afternoons. Works well for me because the light is usually halfway nice. So I go and hang out or just go on a walk and see if any are around and get a quick photo or two. This guy and one other were running the rapids and I shot it with the Canon 70-200 f2.8 RF lens. Boom. Done. Then three years later write about it in the blog. These kayak shots are the easy stuff. Like getting warmed up with some easy spinning before pounding out 300+ watt intervals while riding uphill on the bike.

It’s really important for me to stay in photography shape. I shot this yesterday at the pool. It took longer to set up the light and grab a stool for him to sit on than to shoot this quick portrait. It’s of Rob, the Athletic Club of Bend pool boss, and his big smelly dog Lambeau. I did it with a small Profoto light and the Fuji 23mm f1.4 lens. Stayed shooting, stayed in shape.