Photographing the Neighborhood

Over the past year we have been taking photographs of the owners or employees at various businesses in the the neighborhood around our studio. It has been a fun way to get to know our neighbors and give them a better understanding of what we do. It has also been a great way to increase my portfolio of environmental portraits. I plan on continuing the series for some time and hope to some day have a show from all of the different portraits.

Yesterday we photographed DJ, who manages Little's Liquors across the street. I thought it would be fun to show the process that goes into the final photo for a shoot like this.

First is the getting the exposure correct with my assistant (Stephanie helped on this shoot). We also use these test shots to get our composition and set exactly how we want it.

Next is taking the photograph of our main subject. We work on getting his body position correct and getting the lighting exactly how we want it. We are constantly making minor adjustments as we go. Then the goal is to get the look we want from our subject. Since this is the fourth photo in the series we have a good idea of what we want. We still took 65 shots if DJ to get what we wanted.


The next step is to get the exposure for our background. This shoot proved to be a little more challenging because of the bright flourescent bulbs, but I also like the feel they gave to the background. I took a shot for the bulbs (so they don't look blown out) and one for the overall space.

The final piece is the getting the blurred figure in the background. We have put a blurred figure in the background of each shot in the series. I think it makes the main subject stand out more and have more importance in the photo. Stephanie hasn't been in any of my photos before, so she got to be the blur. Getting the blur exactly right with the correct timing of firing the shutter and her speed of movement is challenging. We took 23 photos to get it just right.


The next step is to put it all of it together in the computer. The images are all put on layers and then carefully masked out to see what we want. The final step in post production is to get the exposure and feel we want exact. We shoot in RAW format, so we can do color correction as we pull all the images together. Their are a total of 12 layers in this photo to get our finished product.

Here is the final image once everything comes together.


You can see more of our neighborhood shots at www.mccoryjames.com.