Once a Photographer…

Today I re-donned my photographer’s cap. Last week, Tess* asked if I’d take some headshots of her for various purposes. I, being a push-over whenever a DLT asks me for just about anything, of course said, “Sure.” After all, I’d done a bit of actor/model promo photography back in the day. True, that day was a couple of decades ago when the photos were stored as silver crystals on a film instead of bits in a chip,  and I wouldn’t be using a so-familiar (D)SLR, but would have to rely on a mid-level point-and-shoot camera, but I figured the worst thing that could come of this is that Tess and I waste an afternoon. No risk for her.

Anyway, Dale also joined us on our outing, which was a good thing as she was able to provide assistance to both cover Tess during wardrobe changes, and me when the camera’s LCD was washing out in the sunlight. We did out shoot at Albuquerque’s Botanical Gardens. The park is currently being wired up for the “River of Lights” display that is an annual must-see for the Duke City. Even with autumn having fallen, and few plants in bloom, the Japanese Garden section provided marvelous backdrops for many of the location pics.

I have to say that Tess was a trooper through all of this. As a photographer, my interest is trying to get some good photos…the comfort of the model, not so much. Tess, bless her heart, followed the directions even when they were more “argh” than “ahhh”.

At any rate, we finished up the day with a session in my quickly-constructed studio. I don’t have even half of the equipment I used to have, but experience allowed me to make due. Having looked though the several hundred frames that were snapped through the day, I’d say that there are several that are worthy of digital darkroom work. Overall, I hope they will be useful additions to her portfolio.

Before I called it a day, I picked one random pic from the studio shots. It’s not the best pic that I’ll be playing with, but I think it shows that there’s promise from today’s sessions (at right).

Over the coming days, I’ll be loading pictures into Photoshop and doing all the “fun” digital darkroom stuff. It’s a world away from the dodging and burning I used to have to do in the old-school wet darkroom, where much of the manipulation was somewhat dependent on luck as each attempt would yield a somewhat different result.

Honestly, the prize for me was getting to spend a pleasant afternoon with a couple of the people in my life I most like to spend time with. There were a lot of laughs, today. Definitely a MasterCard “priceless” moment.