I’ve been very under the weather and unlike myself for a while now. Sorry, I will start posting again when I get back into the flow of things, hopefully soon.

Until then, enjoy Kristin. This shot was taken as a possible Imagine Mag cover shot last year but another shot was chosen. I like the shot because I love Kristin’s smile!

Women are bombarded everyday by media, products, and opinions that provide unrealistic, unfair, and unnatural views of women. Here’s an interesting and disturbing fact: if the Barbie doll were real, her body measurements would be 39-18-33, she’d wear a size 3 shoe, and at 5?9? and 110 lbs, she’d be both 35 pounds underweight and (with a BMI of 16.24) she’d lack the body fat required to menstruate. This is what represents Woman? If Barbie were real, I’d offer her a donut immediately. ~ JD

I just found a new blog I really like. It’s called The Body Blog.  Go check it out, its worth a read or two. And click on the the link above about unnatural views of women. Excellent stuff!

I only have a minute since I’m getting ready to run out for a shoot but I had to give a shout out to my friends Rick and JimmyD who have been emailing me about a shot from yesterday’s shoot. Just to recap, I was using a new lighting technique supplied by WillT and my new 5D MK2 for the first time in the studio.

Here is the crop that Rick and Jimmy suggested. It also has been further processed with the Shadows and Hightlights tool in Photoshop as suggested by Jimmy to demonstrate the shadow detail:

To give you a sense of how big the 21 MP RAW file is, here is the original frame. Click on the pic to see the whole unprocessed 2 Meg jpg but keep in mind that the jpg is at 50% of the original size!

And from the complete frame, I was able to crop out a head shot. Click to see full size.

What a great thing this inter-webby thing is when you can get such quality input from strong shooters so quickly.

Gotta go, got a model, hair stylist and MUA arriving in 30 minutes! I’ll post some from that shoot, too!

I had a blast in the studio this afternoon. Danielle was a joy to work with and WillT’s lighting input really helped me get out of my lighting rut.

Unfortunately, I discovered an issue with the 5D Mk2. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not returning it to the store! The shadow detail is awesome (click on the pic to see a larger version) but a shutter issue may have cost me 1/3 of my shoot. More later as I go through the shots more thoroughly.

As you may have read, I’ve been busy and for that I’m grateful. I’ll post later about everything I’ve been up to but this weekend is going to be fun. I have two shoots lined up and they’re both just for fun and experimenting and learning. And when I’m having fun, that means…

…SHADOWS!

(sorry for the pic caption, I linked it from my website opening slideshow)

Today is about shadows and simple, yet dramatic, light setups. I also consulted with WillT over at Boudoir Photographer on some lighting ideas. That’s the beauty of this Inter-webby thingy, that you can get great advice from qualified people just by asking.

Sunday is a Fashion shoot. The model OWNS the Gucci, Prada, etc and its all tailored to her. That shoot I am imagining will be all about light, not shadows. We’ll see, shoots have a way of shooting themselves and the model is very experienced.

So, thanks to Will for his ideas and thanks to you for reading. I’ll have new blog material in a couple of days.

Whether the pix will be good enough to post is the question!