UCSB Shoot with Scott Sneddon, Victoria Hansen and Michael McCann

I've worked at UCSB for over 30 years in IT. It was only a few months ago that I realized what a great location it is for photography, particularly fashion/glamor. So, I've been sneaking up on it since then and finally got the chance to try out some of the great backgrounds and areas. Victoria Hansen (http://www.modelmayhem.com/830819) contacted me and wanted to shoot and my friend Scott Sneddon (http://www.modelmayhem.com/364472) wanted to shoot with me while he is on leave from Korea where he is currently stationed. And my son, Michael, needed some experience shooting glamor. So, we packed up and went down to UCSB for an afternoon of exploring and shooting.

This is the first post i have done where I have tried to use URL's on other websites rather than uploading to Blogspot ... it didn't work as I expected so you will only see part of an image, but you can click on the images to see the whole image. Uploaded images resize. There is no mention that this won't be the case with links. I'll be more careful in the future.

UCSB has a lot of rules. They even have a few about using UCSB as a setting. They don't want people attributing things to UCSB that are not in keeping with the University's mission or using the University's image for commercial purposes. But they do allow Brooks students to shoot assignments. Since we were not commercial and aren't using UCSB for inappropriate purposes I figured we'd be OK ... plus I know a few people!

Scott has a fair amount of experience shooting models with "Strobist" Style equipment which is all he's had in Korea. Since I had no experience but plenty of equipment we decided it would be a good opportunity.

Scott had worked with Victoria before and had a good idea of what she could do. We took my truck and were soon walking around checking for locations. The courtyard of my building is a very concrete/industrial area so that's where we started. We set up two 580EX II's on stands with umbrellas and set them to slave units on channel one, one of each bank, A & B. I put my ST-E2 on a 1DMIII with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. We backed Victoria into a small architectural detail and played with the lights. Not the best but we were warming up.

I love to see behind the scenes shots so I know what was going on with lighting and surroundings so I'm borrowing one that Scott took of me shooting Victoria.

Next we wanted to try to shoot high f-stop to darken the sky but we just didn't have enough power to overwhelm the sky so we moved around and went with the building as background, still using the two lights held by Scott and Michael.

We had Victoria climbing around on everything. And since she climbs well, we next sent her up a tree, which was our most successful spot I think. We did have a bit of trouble getting the lights up high enough ... Michael, who is about 6' had his light on a fully extended lightstand and was on tippy toes.

From there we went to Kerr Hall which has some very unusual concrete texture on its exterior. Scott showed me how he set the lights for his "signature" shot and then put a gel on a 580EX that he held in his hand to give the concrete some color as well as texture. Very nice images.

Here's one with the gel on the wall.

I realize it would be nice to have more behind the scenes shots and I'm waiting for the price of Canon's G10 to come down to a reasonable price point, about $350, but I know everyone is trying their best to hold prices up even though there's no money around to buy stuff at the inflated prices they have gotten used to getting.

Travel Safe!

Dwight