Love? pt. I | Christina J. Schmidt

Last time I hooked up with this beauty, she wanted to meet on a beach. An idea super cool and something I was up for - right until the day came and the weather turned into a propper NIGHTMARE!! 😂🙈

Luckily for us, the results ended okay so it wan't all just wasted. ☺️ However, she reached out to me again recently and invited me by that same spot we met on the first time ever. 😁🙌🏻
This time around we found a date in a period of time where the weather was much more stabile and that shines through on these new photos. 🤩👌🏻

It's once again the tiny beauty badass Christina J. Schmidt and she's back in this new two part session made in the woods, but got some heavy urban/street vibes to it. ☺️

Let's go behind the scenes..

First of all; the weather was close to perfect! The sun was out - and in fact, it was a bit too shiny to say the least. 😅
When shooting outdoor the most important thing is to keep an eye out for the contrast between the bright areas and the dark areas. "The contrast", so to speak.
The sensor in most cameras is having a difficult time capturing harsh contrasts made from the sun - meaning that shadows either get too darkened or the bright areas is getting overexposed. 🤓

On the example below, I show the difference it does, asking your model to turn just slightly to another side, so that the face is only covered in smooth light/shadow.

(Above: As you clearly can see here, it makes up some more smooth. calm and in general just nicer looks to avoid direct sunlight to the models face. That's why we normally use a diffusor or reflector, to get a better way of controlling it)

Prior to doing this job, I had bought a new silly camera lens which I wanted to try out. 😁 I don't recall exactly where and how I found it, but it was the Retropia Repurposed Disposable lens which had this very distinctive 'Oreo'-look to it.

They promote it as 'an easy way to achieve an oldschool 90s look to your photos' - but as expected, it's not really all true. 😜 It's super cheap tho (like 30$) so it's more of a gimmick than anything really useful, which was exactly why I decided to give it a go.
The funny thing about working with it, is by far that you have to work with Manual focus and obviously can't use zoom.

(It's hard to see, because it's almost not even there! 😆 It looks incredibly stupid attached to the camera and it works exactly as stupid as it looks - but it's fun to play with and with the right amount of light you can get some very obscure results)

Photo #08 in this series was shot with that exact lens.
As you can see it distorts the image very much, like the trashy one-use cameras we used in the 90s.

I think I will bring it along on my trip next week. 🛫☀️📸

We did record a fair amount of 'Behind The Scenes'-clips on this shoot, so if you please I could make it into a lenghty video - just not sure how much technical insights I will be able to provide you with since the whole setting was pretty much straight forward. 🤓 Let me know if you're interested tho, then I will do my best to make you a video.

Please feel free to ask away about whatever you want to know about this shoot! ☺️ Technical stuff, practical stuff, tips or tricks - or simply just let me know what you think. 🥳🙏🏻