Welcome visitors to a new blog post. I recently had the pleasure of working with Janaya for the first (and second) time and thought it would be fun to give a rundown of the two photoshoots, share some images and talk about the different setups and situations shooting outdoors vs. in a studio setting.
First of all, this wasn't actually my first time meeting Janaya - her family attended our church many years ago so I knew (and even had photos of) her and her family from different events when she was just a kid (back then I acted as the 'event photographer' for things whether people wanted it or not! haha). I connected with Janaya on Instagram, we discussed shoot ideas and locations and we set up a time to shoot at a local park.
Shoot 1 - Outdoors + Summer Dress
For our very first shoot together Janaya and I met at a local (Pippy) park in the early evening and just walked around and started shooting. We had discussed outfits a bit beforehand and Janaya picked this lovely, bright dress and I think it worked really well. One (possible) issue with outdoor shoots is that you tend to be limited to a single outfit/look (unless you have a nearby location that can facilitate outfit changes) but we worked around this by varing the location/background, lighting and poses. Below are some of my favourites from our shoot. There's a mix of natural light and flash photography here (see if you can spot the difference). I love to mix flash/strobes into my outdoor portraits as it really helps to light the face and make the eyes pop.
After the success of this shoot, I was looking forward to working together again. Janaya was interested in trying an indoor studio shoot so we could play around with more outfits (and worry less about wind and bugs). Onwards to shoot number 2!
Shoot 2 - Studio Shoot
For our second shoot, Janaya and I met at my church building - where I've done almost all my studio portraits over the years (thanks VCC). It's got lots of open spaces and blank walls, bathrooms for changing and checking yourself in the mirror and no interuptions!
As you can see from the behind the scenes (BTS) shot, things aren't too fancy - a couple flashes/speedlights, light modifiers (large umbrella, octabox), a silver reflector and a grey background (plus a stunning model and 10+ years experience of photographing people completes the package).
The Outfits
For our first look, Janaya brought another lovely fitted, summer dress paired with some bracelets and jewelry. We got the setup dialed in and grabbed some lovely shots. For the second look we went for a favourite of mine - denim + bare shoulders. Denim just looks so good in the studio and you can pair it with a couple simple tops and get a lot of variety. I love the denim jacket with the tube top as it provides nice contrast and allows some off-the-shoulder looks so we played around with the jacket on, off one shoulder, off both shoulders and off completely (and some with the jacket thrown over the shoulder). The last look was another white top with a little more structure and some detail. We also got a few nice headshots in between and finished off with some shallow depth of field portraits (another favourite of mine).
I think for only her second time in front of the camera Janaya did amazing and I expect she might find herself in front of other photographers in the future! I hope you enjoyed this little rundown and maybe I'll do more of these in the future.
