Growing Portfolio

A shot of Helga and I walking from one location to another out in the desert.

An old friend of mine, Helga, who moved to Holland several years ago to live there is in town. Today we did a shoot so that I could grow my portfolio and so that she could get some photos of herself.

We did a mid-morning/midday shoot (!) out at some deserted buildings. Town was covered in a thick fog again that even reached to our location (some 40km out of town) at around 10h30. As soon as the fog burned off though, the afternoon heated up very quickly to become a swelteringly humid. Still, Helga and I shot out what we could. Despite lathering herself with sunscreen, she still got burnt.

The shoot was great fun. We had no preconceived ideas of what we wanted to do, so used the location and light to determine what we shot. The circumstances were very difficult. I shot exclusively with analog lenses, so everything was natural light. I have to admit that I really would have liked to use a fill-flash for some of the work, but the analog lenses disable the cameras flash capacities. I struggled with focusing the lenses (again), particularly when trying to shoot wide - the lenses are the 35-70mm zoom and 50mm primes.

After the deserted buildings, we headed back to a clearer town to have a cup of coffee and short break. Afterward, we headed to an abandoned sports stadium in the center of town and got some interesting shots in mirrored glass. From there we drove around looking for another location, and chanced to pass the now defunct brewery building. It was after 17h00 and almost everyone had gone home. I asked one of the employees still there if we could shoot, and to my surprise he said we could, but only had half an hour. He led us to a couple of incredible rooms we could use and I got busy as quickly as possible. The light was dim so I could only use the 50mm prime at f-1.8 to get any kind of speed on the glass. I struggled yet again with the wider shots and focusing. This time the focusing was tricky because I could hardly see Helga in some of the shots, she was so dark, and working at f-stop 1.8 meant absolute precision. Nonetheless, it was a very special half hour of shooting - the brewery is being dismantled and it will be impossible to shoot there in the near future, so I feel very fortunate to have at least got a couple of relatively decent shots in there. I would really like to go back and shoot there some more - the place is incredible.

All in all I'm happy with the day and am very glad to have another new face to add to my portfolio. I must say a big thanks to Helga for her patience with me and for her great sense of humor. It was a very fun day and a very easy-going shoot.

*I haven't posted for a while because:
1. Last weekend I had back-to-back birthdays of my step-son and own son which completely wiped me out and
2. My internet connection has been down since Monday (at least each evening I have tried to get on to the net)