I love working with musicians!

They are often solid creative people and have spent some time in front of a camera so getting good posing is not a chore. Good eye contact with the camera and an idea of the story they want told in the image makes for a fun photo shoot. Especially fine session with Valerie Romanoff of Starlight Orchestras who splits her time between New York, NY and Sedona, AZ.

Valerie was looking for images to use in her social media. Some images were set in the red rocks and some were during a live performances over in Cottonwood at the Main Stage venue. She performed with some great musicians as part of the Bottom Line Jam with host band Bottom Line. (Totally enjoyed the performance by the way!) When I was going through the first edit my wife Holly looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh my, she’s going to have a hard time choosing images! There are so many good ones.” I’d like to think it was mostly my skill, but Valerie is a skilled performer and is extremely photogenic!

Here are a few selects from the outdoor session…

valerie romanoff guitarist

The Path leads right to Valerie and Bell Rock is pointing right to her also…

valerie romanoff musician

With Courthouse Butte in the Background.

valerie romanoff head shot portrait

This is a pose idea I picked up from Peter Hurley (The Head Shot: Secrets to Creating Amazing Head Shot Portraits)

 For the outdoor photo session I used my workhorse camera the Lumix GH4 with either the Lumix Vario 12-35mm or 35-100mm f2.8 lenses mounted. We had nice light a little after sunrise supplemented with a Paul C Buff mono light powered with a Vagabond Mini Lithium battery. Having power to take studio lights easily on location gits you enough flash power to control the scene. This was fitted with a 35″ foldable Octabox. In order to keep shape and form the flash was placed on the same side as the sun to not flatten out light.

Yours in Creative Photography,      Bob

PS – Images from the Main Stage performance will be posted tomorrow