Armin School - Part 1

This weekend Chris and I went up to the Washington DC area to attend Armin's photography mentoring program, which doesn't have an official name yet, although Chris likes to call it "The Fiesta School." We arrived Thursday night and were in for a huge temperature shock when we got outside of the airport. We were no longer in the comfort of our mild Florida weather, but instead were greeted by temperatures in the 20s with a lot of wind.

Friday morning we began day 1 of our mentoring session. The first day was geared toward techniques and not as much about getting the perfect picture. On Day 2 we really focused on getting the shots. Expect a lot of good stuff from the next few posts! We started out meeting up in Fairfax with Armin and our beautiful model Maggie. Maggie sure was a trooper considering it was 28 degrees when we parked. We began with a little coffee and then headed out to our first lesson. We started off going over the basics with Armin so he could be sure we already had a grasp of core lighting and background concepts. We started off with a simple, but fun background to ease into things.

Next it was time to work with some more advanced lighting techniques including "rim lighting". Maggie's beautiful red hair just looked so pretty in the sun. After this lesson, I think rim lighting became one of my favorite techniques. Keep an eye out for it in later posts from the weekend.

Here is Armin deep in thought explaining the rim light technique.

We found these great columns which provided great shade for controlled lighting and still allowed us to create some cool compositions. And of course, we were still able to catch some light and bring out the red sparkle in Maggie's hair.

The next lesson was "how to shoot the bride and groom as they're walking down the aisle". Except in this instance Maggie was our bride and the aisle was a long straight sidewalk next to the road. It was probably close to 29 degrees at this point with the wind whipping around.

I know it looks like I'm eating my fist, but it was just so cold I couldn't feel my hands so I was trying to warm them up. Feel free to leave a comment making fun of me. =)

Lucky girl had a nice warm jacket that turned out to make super cute pictures!

Originally we had planned on Maggie wearing a few different outfits. After hearing the weather forecast, it became a simple change of winter jacket. The Victoria Secret jacket must've inspired Maggie to bring out her wild side. Chris found a cute light pole to take pictures of Maggie on and she seemed a little too comfortable spinning around it and posing for us. =)

Here are a couple more from the day that we squeezed in before hurrying inside to thaw. This was just a sun flare artsy shot that created a faded look that we liked.

This was just a sun flare artsy shot that created a faded look that we liked.

Thanks so much Maggie, for braving the cold for us! And thanks Armin for all the great tips and for sharing your knowledge with us! Check out some more pictures from the day on Armin's blog.