I know that things have been quiet here lately, and I’m trying to remedy that. I’m a little behind in posting some good stuff! In late October, as Autumn was in full-force in the Pittsburgh area, I had the opportunity to take some senior portraits of the lovely Meredith.
I met Meredith a few years ago while doing some theatre tech work with the Riverview School District. We have consistently run into each other at various arts events in Pittsburgh. I guess she liked what she saw in my photos, and earlier this year she asked if I would take her senior portraits. I was completely thrilled. Besides being quite pretty, Meredith is a lot of fun to work with. She wanted to do them in the Fall. I couldn’t wait.
After talking back-and-forth for a little bit about what she wanted, the suggestion of Allegheny Cemetery came up as a possible location. I was hooked. I had always wanted to shoot something there. Meredith wanted some shots with her violin (“Aaron”) and some on her own, and I was more than happy to oblige.
Allegheny Cemetery has a ton of great locations. It helps that the place is huge, and much of its architecture is what I like to call “industrial-age gothic.” If you have the opportunity, definitely check it out as a location. The opening shot and the one above were both shot around the gatehouse on Penn Ave. The opening shot was through the beautiful iron gates. Above was on the inside part of the gatehouse, where there are these large porticos with decorative tile floors and ceilings.
Jenny came along to assist, of course. It was a good thing, too. We had originally scheduled to do this shoot the day prior, but canceled because Pittsburgh was getting buffeted by some serious sustained winds. By the next day, things had calmed-down somewhat and we went ahead with the shoot. There were still some periods of heavy wind, though, so Jenny helped me to wrangle my umbrella and light stands and not have anything flying across the cemetery.
We did a few different things with lighting on this shoot. Some shots were mostly natural with some fill from an SB900 into a shoot-through umbrella. Some were about half-and-half natural and flash. We also did some–like the shot above–that were mostly flash. I use a cut of 1/4 CTO gel on my flash when using it as a key, like I did on these shots. It helps to warm things up just a touch. With all of the clouds on this shooting day, it worked quite well. It really helps to make Meredith’s violin glow, too, for a little extra dose of awesome.
Speaking of Meredith’s violin, there was one point where we had to walk around the gatehouse to get back inside. We had been shooting through that pretty iron gate, with Meredith inside and Jenny and myself outside. Jenny and I gathered our gear and started to head around the gatehouse. As we did, we started to hear some music. At first, I thought this was a little scary–we were walking back into a cemetery, the wind was starting to blow hard again, and now we were hearing an old celtic melody drifting through the air. When we came around the corner of the gatehouse, we found the source (see above). Meredith is one of those people who doesn’t just play the violin. It becomes a part of their mind for a little while, and we got to experience some of that. It was a really awesome moment. We managed to stay quiet and get a few shots while we listened to her play for a couple of minutes. The shoot was already fabulous and we were getting close to wrapping-up, so this was just icing on the cake.
On our way out, we stopped at a small set of ponds to grab some additional shots. Remember when I was saying earlier that Meredith was fun to work with? I think this shot captured her attitude perfectly. The whole morning was filled with laughter and photography. It was a great morning. Thank you, Meredith, for allowing us to make some photographs of you. And thank you to Meredith’s Mom for the Allegheny Cemetery suggestion–that was a stroke of genius!
We also put a slideshow together, which is linked below. Thanks for a great day, Meredith, and happy senior year!
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