After seeing some of Millie’s beach photos, the girls were excited to get out there and get a few of their own! We always have fun shooting at the beach, so we made it a date and crossed our fingers for good weather. On that day, the usual bright sun made things challenging…but it was the least of our concerns. Weather conditions had been perfect all week, but of course on our planned day…the chilly wind was blowing up a sandstorm! The girls were limited to facing one way which meant salt and sand facials. =/ We couldn’t use reflectors or umbrellas neither; I took out the reflector and it quickly flapped Sue in the face (sorry Sue!).
Click through to see the rest of the photos. I think they turned out great considering the wind and bare flash. Since we hadn’t used it in awhile we took out the D90 and the trusty 50mm f/1.8 lens (the perfect inexpensive portrait lens).
The wind and surf picked up as the day progressed. This was good and bad. Good because the high surf made for a great background. Bad because it started to get really chilly for the girls. Look closely and you’ll see plenty of goosebumps. Sand was also blown all over and got everywhere (yes, there too =/). However, the girls were still good sports. They didn’t mind getting wet and wild for us. Thanks girls!<3
Here is the BTS shot of our simple setup, look at Ty’s fro! haha
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prettygeekyphot
Wow. I love the quality of these images (how come I can’t achieve this with my camera?????). I really like the first one and the close up with the blue-tint tone one. Very nice.
I hope you can answer this question for me. I have a D5000 and I use it with the 50mm f1.8, and most of the time the pictures come out not as sharp as I want it. Is it me (shaking hands) or is it the camera??
Gosh, even with bare flash, it still looks GREAT! [:
The wind blowing is perfect! Haha. Natural, no need
to add a fan. I like that SB600 & radiopoppers but
they confuse me soo much!
awwwwh: these pictures makes me miss you all so much, and the beach of course.. kristy and sue: you both are just breath taking.. beautiful as always… luve the pictures
As always, the last picture is my favorite, LOL. Next in line would be the 1st picture and the blue-tinted 13th picture.
Beautiful like usual guys. I imagine it was a bit chilly, as I saw the goosebumps right away in the blue tinted picture of Kristy even before I got to the bottom where you mentioned goosebumps. Poor girls….they didn’t show that they were cold though. Excellent modeling on their part. They both look amazing for having kids! Sue looks like she’s having so much fun in that first picture. Makes me want to leave WI and come to sunny CA right now
Didn’t realize this but, I really love all the detail shots – all of them, past and present.
nice pics…I really like the 1st pic of Sue. =)
I dislike all mine, but I LOVE all of Sue’s.
@ Na
It’s one of my favorites and makes me want to jump up and down! ahah. I am in love with Sue in that first picture.
With that particular 50mm f1.8 lens, you have to have a D90 or higher for auto focus…which can be annoying but I find that when I’m at such an wide open aperture, it’s tough to get my focus point tack sharp unless I can hold really still or have the camera on top of a tripod so to give myself more leeway I will dial up to an f-stop of f2.8 and that makes a great difference…and I can relax more instead of worrying about focus so much. I find that is the sweet spot for that lens. =)
@ Lynn
Thank you! At first I was a little discouraged because of the weather conditions but eventually we just took advantage of the free wind machine and made the most of it! ahah, turned out better than I expected! *happy dance*
@ Millie
We are so lucky to have both of them because each one brings their own personality to the pictures and you never know what you’re going to get! Whenever you miss the beach just turn on the video Chillie took! ahah, the sunset was perfect that day…miss you guys!
@ Julie
I just happened to look over at Ty and noticed his perfectly jelled hair looked crazy wild so after laughing my head off I snapped a few pics of the awesome fro. Nice job to the Beach Wind Barbershop!
@ Mk
The girls were great, I couldn’t have asked for more. When my pictures turn out well like this, it makes me love what I do even more! Yippee! It’s so gorgeous right now, the California poppies are illuminating the hillsides and you can see snow-capped mountains in the distance…such an eye-popping sight! …oh and it’s soooo much warmer! muahah!
@ Digit
Thank you! I love detail shots – I just need to remember to take them! ahah…but sometimes I get distracted by someone’s beauty I forget to focus the camera anywhere else! =D
@ Logan’s Mommy
Thank you! Sue is getting to be a natural! I love this picture so much I just might photo-chop my face into it! ahaha
@Kristy
Like I told Sue…the most important thing is that I love them! lol
Image #1 is perfectly composed. I really like it.
Absolutely stunning!
Lol. Yeah, the no auto-focus is bad. XD I’m going to go out to take some pictures today, and I’m going to try the f2.8.
Thank you for the suggestion!
Ur pictures are stunning!! xx
it looks like so much fun! i wish it would warm up so i could take a beach trip too.
LOVE the photos ! The ladies are so pretty !! LOVE the quality!
These are all so lovely! That first one of Sue is really sexy, and I love the desaturated ones too. Her eyes are so striking.
Hello. I love your beach shots. Could you please tell me what settings you used? Im shooting beach pics soon and own a d300 and sb600.
Gracias
Hi Rosa,
Thanks for dropping by our blog. We moved around a lot during the beach shoot so exposures were changing depending on the direction of the sunlight. However, most of the shots were in the f/3-4 and 1/1200 – 1/2000 shutter range. We used 2 bare SB600 speedlights to light or fill the subjects. In hindsight, with a non-busy background like the beach shore we could have increased the f-stop to slow down the shutter speed… a little sacrifice in depth of field creativity for more speedlight power/flexibility. Let us know if you have any more questions.
These photos are beautiful!!! i absolutely love the beach ones. I laughed out loud at the equipment shot comments. haha… yeah, that’s one pretty bad ass fro.
More great pictures!! Love them!!
Is that the kasey pole adapter?
What did you do in post to get this effect? LR preset?
http://www.prettygeeky.com/images/uploads/2010/beach/beach-5a.jpg
Love the blog!
@Kevin
Thanks for stopping by.
Yes that’s the kacey pole adapter =) For that image, we used a gradient map in Photoshop, the added tone helps set the mood.