Portrait

Introducing Personal Candid Portrait Photography

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Candid Portrait Style captures you as your friends will remember you.

Jason Collin Photography introduces a new candid portrait photography package designed for one person, the Personal Candid Portrait Photography Package.

 --Jason believes in photographing you as you will be remembered by your friends.  This means, the personal candid portrait session can happen right while you are hanging out with your friends.  As an experience street photographer, Jason quickly blends into the background hardly to be noticed in order to make true candid photographs, like the one above.

-Or, leave your friends at home and tell Jason your favorite spot or favorite thing to do, and he will apply the same candid photography skills at the location of your choice or doing the activity of your choice.

 

 

Photo Story: Serve the Servants

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A former model, this woman was an interesting moment in a night of 1,500 photographs

For the past decade, these lyrics have been burned in my mind, "Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old."  They are the opening lyrics to the Nirvana song "Serve the Servants," which in turn is the opening track on the album In Utero, the follow up to the greatest album of my generation, Nevermind.  I cannot tell you how many times those lyrics randomly pass through my mind each week, but I can tell you it is multiple times.  

I met the woman in the portrait above while photographing the Treasure Island Yacht & Tennis Club's huge New Year's Eve party.  Whenever I photograph such an event, I always photograph the staff as well (though never asked to), with whom I naturally feel a greater connection.  We are in fact both the servants of the wealthier hirer.  Me just for that day or night, they for an undetermined amount of time.  However, as a photographer, I cross both social lines since photographing someone is a personal action, I can be close to the guests of the event on that level, but also to the staff working behind the scenes as I too am just an employee.  I like being able to cross both lines.

I had a chance to speak with the woman above for a few moments.  I had seen her from afar and knew immediately I wanted to photograph her.  Her face has a lot of character, and something about her hairstyle fascinates me.  Maybe it is the color?  Or maybe that it is not the typical hairstyle for a woman that age?  I asked her to stand in front of the wall so as to produce a clean background and to allow me to bounce the Nikon SB-800 Speedlight I was using off the opposite wall to light her as best I could in such a random space.

Such a portrait as this is not a priority to a client, but I made a mental note of it while going through the full 1,500 photo batch from the event to sometime highlight and single out this portrait.

The woman went on to tell me she did some modeling when she was younger.  As is my usual custom, I only wanted to hear her story, happy to only listen.  I cannot stand to speak of mine, and I was glad she did not ask any questions of me.  I would like someday to ask her more questions if I ever had the chance.  

In the meantime, "serve the servants" will continue to echo through my mind . . . 

Model Shoot - Winter Romance with Glen & Johora in Sepia

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Mother Nature provided perfect weather for our winter romance themed shoot in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

A long in the planning modeling shoot finally came together on a blustery and semi-arctic (for Florida) morning in Saint Petersburg which suited the shoot theme of "winter romance" perfectly.  Models Glen and Johora had no trouble fitting their wardrobe to the conditions.  I first met Glen earlier this year at a FACES fashion show at USF.  I asked him if he knew of anyone to do the winter romance shoot with and he invited Johora.  It is always great when the models are already friends as they will be at ease with each other and can chat away while I setup for the various shots.  

Despite the relatively early and chilly hour, Johora was constantly energetic.

As you can see, my love affair with the "sepia landscape" filter continues.  This is in part because I really like Silver Efex Pro and because last month I saw a lecture by master photographer, Pepito, who mostly only shoots in sepia.  His work really made an impression on me.

 Glen looking all business.We shot at five different locations in just over 90-minutes of shooting, all of which were a good distance apart, so this moving around kept every one from freezing solid.  I reluctantly wore a jacket myself as I am loathe to in Florida out of principal that it should always be warm here.

This shot was my idea. I saw the backlit tree and thought it could be a good prop.

The shoot was a lot of fun for me and it was good to get to know Glen more and to meet Johora.  We already started talking about doing a sunrise shoot come spring!

Candid Florida Beach Portraits - Mary and Family

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Are you Florida family portraits this fun? If not reserve yours today!

Yesterday's Deluxe Candid Portrait session with Mary, her husband Nathan, sons Kyle & Avery, and Emily was a whole lot of fun!  They were such an energetic and loving family that it made my job pretty easy.  They were willing to run, splash and frolic, and even walk through a bit of Florida jungle.

Florida family portrait in a great tree in Belleair Bluffs

This was a two location portrait session with the first at a great little waterfront park in Belleair Bluffs.  Besides the water views there were these low-lying, horizontal tree branches that were good for wrapping up Mary's family in for a Robinson Crusoe-ish treehouse portrait.  The above shot is in sepia, my new favorite processing filter for my photographs these days.

Candid Florida family beach portrait on Honeymoon Island State Park

After Belleair Bluffs we drove to Honeymoon Island State Park from some signature candid beach portraits.  The afternoon sun was still high in the sky and strong, so it was a bit of lighting challenge, but my trusty Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm F2.8D lens with a polarizing filter on it was able to tame the sunlight enough.

Some infrared laughs during our candid Florida beach portrait session

For the first time I included an infrared image (above) in the 40 professionally edits photographs included in the Deluxe Candid Portrait package.  I am increasing the variety of images available to my clients now with infrared, sepia, high structure black & white, enhanced tonal contrast and old plate images just to name some.  Often these types of images are in included in addition to the original color image.

The three hours for this portrait session flew by and I made the drive home from Honeymoon Island State Park very much looking forward to seeing the images on my 24-inch monitor at home.  I was so excited in fact that I finished editing all 40 images by late last night!

Thanks very much again to Mary and her family for a very fun and creative afternoon.