Michelle

This weekend I met up with a group of local photographers to shoot in the downtown Austin area. Michelle had asked me to shoot some portraits of her and so I was on the look-out for a good background. We all met up in the Hickory Street Bar & Grill on Congress Avenue. I'd parked up the hill and walked down to the bar, passed the south facing wall. They'd just painted the wall on the side of the place in a bright orange/yellow. I met Michelle a few minutes later, saw her red hair, and straight away I had the perfect co-ordinated colour background for her portrait. That was easy!

I've often shot with more complimentary colours but I actually like the similar wall tones with her hair - I think it makes for a bright but still not too zany colour palette. We'd all met around noon and the wall was in full sunlight, as it faces the South. Luckily enough we were back at that bar a few hours later after shooting various back alleyways and parking garages. The sun was behind a building and the wall was in bright, open shade. Perfect. We took about 5 minutes to shoot the portrait, setup, walk through a few poses and done. The other shot was taken in the capitol grounds, shooting with all the lights and twilight sky as a background. As I got lower to the ground I started noticing the traffic lights reflecting off the pavement and so I just got lower to play with that and combined in the green traffic light as a hair accent. The camera is turned backwards to give me something to focus on - another good tip for night shooting - focus on the bright lights at the distance you want to shoot at - give your camera a chance to lock on. All in all, it was a fun day to go out and shoot with a bunch of photographers who are willing to put up with the more silly suggestions. Most non-photographers would be bored, rolling their eyes and generally wanting to just move on to the next thing, rather than taking just one more shot.