So after spending an entire year photographing Heather Simpson we wanted to do one last portrait prior to the pageant, plus we needed to photograph each of the contestant in their business suits. The contestants spend the afternoon doing interviews with the judges at a local church in Georgetown, and the queen is the official hostess and introduces each one the contestants to the judges. We occasionally get questions about our pictures so for this one we'll take you behind the scenes to see how we shot our last portrait with Heather Simpson.
After searching the church for option we mostly found solid color cement block walls and low ceilings, so we ended up going to the opposite end of the church where we found some great windows and a little bit of natural light. We thought about taking the contestants outside, but it was a hot and humid day so we really wanted to keep everyone indoors. The idea was to do these pictures as simply as possible - we'd brought in backgrounds and multiple lights in previous years but were determined to keep in simple this time.
For our portrait of Heather Simpson we positioned her with her back to the windows and then framed the shot to use the windows as the background and even a little bit of a graphic element. We liked the way the colors of the windows matched Heather's suit, plus it was a neutral background for the contestants. We used the sunlight coming through the open windows to create a bit of hair light on Heather while Joe held a single speedlight that bounced into the opposite wall for our main light. We got two vertical portraits and then grabbed this one horizontally framed composition specifically for the blog. The entire process of photographing Heather probably took less then five minutes. We actually pre-metered the exposure and practiced the composition with Heather's sister in advance so we'd only need a couple minutes.
We had an amazing year photographing Heather Simpson and we are very appreciative of how hard she worked at our sessions to get some many great pictures. We love doing pictures of the Georgetown Fair Queen, and we can't wait to show you more right here with Josh and Joe Travels!
