When I headed to Phoenix, AZ last month for A R I Z O N A (more on that later), I knew I wanted to take advantage of the desert scenery and do a creative photoshoot with my friend Jordan White, frontwoman of Jane N’ The Jungle. My internet pal Kelly (a Phoenix native, though she was out of town that weekend) suggested heading to South Mountain Park, and Jordan knew just where to go.
Jordan brought a few outfits with her and I was particularly excited about two items: a leopard print hat with a gold chain, and a black jacket covered in fringe. Both made their way into plenty of the photos.
Most of my photography is concerts, which means I need to freeze action, usually in low light. That means: cranking my ISO (translation: potential for grainy photos) and opening up my aperture (translation: potential for out-of-focus photos) so that I don’t have to slow down my shutter speed (which would create the potential for blurry photos). Shooting in bright sunlight is … well, pretty different. Especially when you’re posing someone for portraits - they’re more still so there’s no worry about needing to freeze action with a certain shutter speed.
We had a GORGEOUS day at South Mountain Park - sunny with clear skies around. I actually took these first few shots with flash - a technique I want to play around with more. Lighting my subject with flash means the background will be better exposed. (You ever take a photo of someone outside and the sky just looks blown out, all white? Using flash can prevent that.)
We went for some wider shots next, to show more of the desert around us. Jordan was a great model to work with - she was comfortable in front of the camera and took direction well when I suggested little adjustments to her poses.
I wanted to create images that JNTJ might use on Instagram, so I worked with Jordan to settle on a visual aesthetic that felt right. The promo for their last single, “Cut Me Open”, was high-contrast and largely black and white, so I knew I wanted to do some black and white shots. Take a look at the images below - presented first in color, then in black and white. See how different they feel?
I’d also brought my prism, and wanted to take some closer shots with my aperture all the way at f/1.4. This did make it trickier to nail focus - but it gave a gorgeous blur to the background, and more importantly, made the glass of the prism itself disappear. This way, you see the light reflected by the prism (aka, the cool prism effect) without seeing the prism itself.
While the look below - with the pink/purple tint - wasn’t ultimately Jordan’s favorite, I did want to include a few photos with this look, because it is something that feels very representative of my style as a photographer.
I wanted a few wider shots involving the prism - and I’m obsessed with how the first shot shows the prism reflecting an outline of Jordan holding the hat. The entire time I shot with the prism, I kept rotating it and moving it around - in photos 2 and 3, Jordan is in almost the same pose, but the light hits her face and hair in a different way, giving a different emphasis to the images. Oh, and again - take a look at this photoset in color, then in black and white; what do the images evoke in each variation?
That fringed jacket Jordan’s rocking in the photos above was simply begging for an epic, “walk down the lonely desert road” shot like this (and a moody image like this begged to be in black and white).
And because I love a cactus… here’s Jordan next to a beautiful, giant saguaro cactus. (In my mind, a saguaro was like, 6 or 7 feet tall. Mayyybe 8 feet… apparently, they average around 40 feet tall!)
I don’t often turn the camera around on myself - but I had fun doing it this time and letting Jordan take a few photos of me. Maybe I’ll have to get my picture taken more often. For the photos of myself, I went with a “warm desert sun” vibe. (Wait, can we talk about the light hitting my pink hair?)
And of course, I had to pose next to the big cactus, too.
I grabbed some photos of the scenery, too. I don’t do much landscape photography - but it was fun thinking about what to capture and what story I wanted to tell without a person in the frame. I’d definitely love to come back to South Mountain Park or anywhere else in Arizona, really - so many cool photo opps.
