portraits · Kim Jay · Victoria BC

In photography by webmeister Bud

20140930 - Kim Jay-0001Canon EOS 70D · Tamron 60mm f/2.0 macro
60 mm · 1/180 s · f/2 · ISO 1250

Last week, I attended a workshop by Christina Craft, a bubbly (srsly, she gives my sugar level a run for its money) wedding photographer with a crazy impressive body of work, and a bag full of tricks for kickass portraits.

Meaghan Konopaki, my often-second-wedding-shooter, raves about Christina (she says hi, Megs), and I’ve heard nothing but good things about her from other photographers. I’ve followed her blog for years, and I’ve heard tell of these workshops for a while so, when I found out this one was coming, I signed up right away.

It was there that, for the second time, I was (knowingly) in the same place as Kim Jay, featured all up and down this post.

20140930 - Kim Jay-0002Canon EOS 70D · Tamron 60mm f/2.0 macro
60 mm · 1/180 s · f/3.5 · ISO 1250

I say “knowingly” because I may very well have been in her presence many times before, but wasn’t aware of it before this past Rifflandia, when she approached me and my blinking neon orange festival hair in the photography pit and introduced herself, for which I’m grateful.

Despite my job in radio, and the importance of getting myself out there to introduce myself and say hi to listeners, my true nature is much more shy and, among my peer photographers, I can be a downright networking chicken.

It was extra-great to meet Kim since I’ve admired her work for such a long time, particularly her portrait work. While much of it can be seen on her portfolio, she’s also recently started a side project called We Are Revelers, a collection of festivalgoer portraits, which is particularly wonderful due to the festing feelings it captures.

20140930 - Kim Jay-0003Canon EOS 70D · Tamron 60mm f/2.0 macro
60 mm · 1/180 s · f/2 · ISO 1250

All of these sparkly, surreal photos of Kim are pretty much straight out of the camera (SOOC), without any Photoshopical deviltry employed.

“But how??!?” you might ask, looking shocked?

One of the many great tricks Christina taught us that evening was placing objects just in front of the lens — something I’ve seen Meaghan do quite often — to create these circles of confusion, as they’re called.

All of the colours and shapes you see in these three photos were taken by shooting through a cheap, broken, multicoloured plastic wind spinner. Brilliant, no? It’s the little things.

Hold tight while I totally overuse this technique in the coming years.

=)