Ally Brand Yoga Shoot

So I met up with Ally to shoot some yoga poses. The light wasn't as good as I expected at the appointed time, this time of year the shift in the length of days can really throw you. But I had my SB-800s and as we worked the sun got lower and helped things along.

There's plenty I wish I'd gotten better. I shot about 250 frames, there were 20 that were good enough to be candidate shots for sharing. I shed a few more. And of what is here some have definite imperfections that are not Ally's fault at all, they're all operator error on my part.

Shadows on eyes, that's on me. I had the tools to correct for that, it just didn't happen. See also depth of field mistakes, shooting fast is all well and good, but for most of these shots I wanted her to be in sharp focus with the bokeh limited to the background.

So like this one where she's laying on the hot, rough pavement with the one leg going straight into the stratosphere, I'm sharing the photo because it has enough going for it (her amazing pose, her face is sharp, I like how the bridge in the background echoes her pose), but her raised leg should be as in focus as her face. F2.5, which isn't as fast as I sometimes go, was too fast for this shot. Probably should have gone more like F5 or F8, the distance between her and the background features would have still isolated her nicely and those lovely limbs would be hella sharper.

She's a very easy model to shoot, gets right to it, takes direction well, has her own good ideas. I hope to do more with her in the future, more yoga shots, and some other stuff too. She's got a ballet background so a dance oriented shoot could be fun, and I've seen shots of her dolled up for car shows and such, she has some range. I was glad she didn't show up with a bunch of heavy makeup for this, heavy makeup on a yoga shoot would make sense like an evening gown for a yoga shoot.

I showed these to a coworker who's been taking yoga and she was astonished by the core strength and balance required to pull these moves off. I was like, yeah, and she'd do it for a long time and do it a bunch of times until I got my shot, or as close as I was going to get to my shot (the depth of field errors and such are tricky to catch just chimping).

I actually had some sore muscles from getting down on the ground to get a good angle on some of these, and while I'm not in the greatest shape I'm not some sofa sloth either.

Heck of a way to spend a Tuesday evening.