I woke up the other morning and had an itch for a certain shoot. I wanted to photograph some “student-life” photos at IADT Detroit, where I teach photography and digital media production. So … well … I did. The first idea that I managed to conjure up with the help of some students was to take over one of the student break rooms and make it seem as though the whole place had gone haywire. I think we managed just that. This photo is achieved with about 11 exposures, later stacked in Photoshop.

A big thanks to Brandon and Karen for helping out with all the set-up and impromptu planning, recruiting, etc. Thanks to all my student models who took an hour of their busy day to get covered in popcorn and have Coke bottles tossed at them.

I’m hoping (assuming I don’t let my schedule get the best of me) that I can continue on and complete a full series of student photos with this sort of off-beat lifestyle tone to them.

Scroll down past the final image for lighting diagrams of some of the components. Note that I kept the lights on the low side for this so that the ambient light of the room would still feel totally real. The only really challenge in doing this was not letting the kicker or rim light overpower the main.

I’d like for everyone to meet Lisa Smith, the owner and lead planner of Gabbi Grace Events. I met Lisa last year when she and several of her assistants were acting as the very busy planners for a traditional Nigerian wedding that I happened to be photographing. I got to get to know Lisa a bit over the course of what was one of the longest and craziest (in a good way) weddings of 2010. As these things can often go, Lisa and I are now set for a little collaboration, which began early this year when I made some profile portraits of Lisa to accompany some future branding tweaks for her company.

Lighting here is very simple. I opted for an LP-160 inside of a beauty dish as the key light for most of the tighter shots (purple shirt and jeans) for the longer shots we went for the classic 60″ shoot-through umbrella with a very hot bare LP-160 as a kicker.

My good friend Drew runs a really great auto-blog called Dashboard Dispatch. Checking it out would be most advisable. I made these portraits of Drew two weeks ago at a freezing-cold paint shop in Riverview, MI. The session was a tad challenging, since most of the shots that were outside took place after dark and in sub-twenty-degree temperatures. What you are looking at with the shots of Drew standing on the back of the flat bed truck is a LP-160 inside of a 20″ silver beauty dish camera-left, with a giant reflector camera-right, and finally a LP-160 with a “rust” colored gel fired behind the subject (clamped to a step ladder). The shot with the sign is almost the same exact key and fill setup, except I swapped the dish for a 60″ shoot-through umbrella to get a lot of background spill. The single standing shot is the 60″ brolly camera-right and a bare LP-160 as the kicker from behind Drew and camera-left. The two shots of Drew in the pink tie are set up with with a LP-160 with a grid as the key and the 60″ brolly directly behind it as some on-axis fill. Toss in a 550ex pushed to 105mm to slash across the backdrop and you’re done.

Enjoy the photos and be sure to check out Dashboard Dispatch. Follow them on twitter, hunt them down on FB, ect.