After a long absence, my Street Portrait Series continued this time in downtown St. Petersburg. I met up with some fellow local photographers, including Michael Thompson of lightenupandshoot.com fame. I first learned the street portrait approach technique from Michael last year. I always have a lot of funning doing street portraits so I hope not to take as long for the next entry in the series as I did this time.
Pictured above is Savannah who volunteered to be a model before heading to a concert at Jannus Live. Savannah said she had never done anything like this before, so to make her feel more relaxed I had her swing around the stop sign post and do a little leg keep to encourage a more natural, and more fun pose. I think she did a great job!
Clare was the first person photographed that evening and a super good sport as several people gathered around her shooting away. With more than one lens around, you definitely need to feel comfortable giving the person/model instruction to get a shot you want. Someone had already asked Clare for an angry look, then I asked her to look at my lens so I did not have to settle for just a profile shot. She works at Frankie D's Tattoo on 1st Ave North in downtown St. Pete.
There is often a great purple toned twilight sky backlighting the buildings of downtown St. Petersburg, and that evening was no exception. I asked Rob and Ashley to stand on the corner so I could include as much of that purple twilight sky as possible in the shot. I chose to shoot off level horizon to avoid some obstructions in the shot. Even with that, I had to delete a building from the right side of the frame.
Thanks again to all the volunteer models. I have already sent them all a copy of the photos I took of them, which is proper street portrait etiquette. I hope to be back out making street portraits again soon. If you want to learn more about DSLR Photography and combine that with doing street portraits, I have 1-on-1 photography lessons available!