Recently, I had the pleasure of working with Amber, (for our second time together) on a fun and collaborative modeling photoshoot in and around my Main Street Stroudsburg photo studio. Amber is an up and coming model and “traveling gypsy” ; ) that can be found crashing at her friends places throughout the Tri-State area.  She loves reading as well as playing her piano and ukulele and her guilty pleasure is McDonald’s, which she sometimes eats more than once a day!  How did she stay looking fit, you wonder?  She never leaves home without her yoga mat, and often has impromptu workout sessions at friends houses! 

This shoot was a ton of fun and I used several very different techniques to achieve these varying looks. Amber is a pro at moving quickly through various poses in her work.

Our session together started off in the studio where we experimented with color and lighting.  We used strobes with colored gels to get the color effects and varied between soft and hard lighting from different angles.

After finishing up inside, we hit the streets. 

I was going for a sort of vintage-urban feel to match Amber’s pants that were passed down from her Grandma who used to rock them back in the 70’s! Also, shout out to Grandma who is often very free with her critique when Amber posts photos, because she LOVED the teaser photo I shared and said we nailed it!

Behind the studio is an urban landscape consisting of building that could use some updating and TLC, but that I have always admired.  We started out in front of an old rusty door where Amber move between powerful as well as some more soft poses. 

After climbing down out of the doorway and skating across the filed of ice, Amber spotted the fire escape and had to have some photos on it. 

I agreed, but we barely were able to hold it down to shoot on! Tom (my fearless intern) stood at the bottom of the fire escape, hold it down so Amber wouldn’t fly away, while Ethan (the video intern guy) captured behind-the-scenes footage of the whole scene. (Watch the video above until the end for some fun snippets). 

After the fire escape fun,  we moved over and shot in front of the wall that’s just covered in vines.  A shadow cast by a building created a hard slash of light that made for some cool effects.

 After a quick wardrobe change we finished off the shoot in an alleyway off of main street. 

There’s an awesome mural for some splashes of color and another blank wall where we created some killer silhouettes.

For the last frame of the day, I was trying out a new lens and experimenting with the lens flare it would give off when pointed it directly into the sun. I was super excited with the results and will be adding this lens to my bag for future shoots.

Make sure to check out Amber’s Instagram account here and hit her up for a shoot!