I love this family. I met Amber on Flickr a couple of years ago when they lived in Charlotte. They moved here last year and when time permits, we get together to talk crap over a beer or just walk around Raleigh shooting some. This past week, I had the honor of doing a casual family shoot with them at Falls Lake. RJ and Amber were married that day and wanted some casual photos to remember the day by. Richard was good enough to assist me on this shoot and also took some of these photos. I had a great time with some great friends.

The next two photos were shot by Richard while I held lights for him and then entertained the little man by throwing rocks in the lake. It is a guy thing.

Congratulations to you three!

So after the shots in the water, Courtney switched dresses and we moved over to a tree in the edge of the woods with the most amazing root system. While Courtney was changing, we had to hastily remove a ton of fishing line on the base of the tree and dispose of beer cans, bottles and lots of other nasty stuff. Take your trash out people!

I really liked this location. It was in the edge of a dense grove of trees with a dark background. It also kept the direct light off of her. The river was directly in front of her for most of these shots which acted like a big ole soft box for a really soft light. As with most of the shots, I shot close to 2.8 to really blow out the background. Enjoy and I’ll try to get more from this shoot up tomorrow.

BTW, if you click on the image, you get a larger version. All images copyright 2008, Keith Warren.

The shot above has the river in the background and thus it is washed out. Big soft box, remember? We did use a reflector here.

Actually between the water and the tree shots above, Courtney saw this tree hanging over the water. She got a gleam in her eye and just smiled looking at it. The she asked if she could climb out for a few shots. I said sure, but had my camera ready to drop so I could chase after her if she fell in. If you read the earlier posts from this shoot, the water was high and running REALLY fast. I have a model out on a dead tree over rapids. OK. Seriously, it was fun like all of this shoot.

So after introductions of the support staff (Amber and Richard) and the model (Courtney) we were ready to begin. We scouted out the river below the dam only to find the water was extremely high. I have gone to this location multiple times over the last 15 years and have never seen it so high. But, you work with what you have. Courtney chose her white dress first. We shot a few beside a tree. Richard aimed the gold reflector at her and I positioned her so that the strong sun was behind her. This offered excellent hair light with no strobe. The gold reflector warmed her skin to an extreme. That was fine because as I cooled the image in Photoshop, the water and such shifted towards the blues.

We shot at a few different locations and also at the generator on the dam. I’ll add more photos and descriptions this week.