High school graduation is a pivotal turning point of every young person as they venture into college and develop key skills for life. It’s one reason why may parents love to have senior portrait photography done before their kids move on.

Here are a number of high school senior portraits of Christine.

I took her senior portraits overlooking Balboa Park’s beautiful landscape. Balboa Park is a perfect spot for any formal portrait work.

Beyond the normal formal scenes of Balboa Park are some of the hidden landscapes, away from the crowds, along dirt paths and stone steps.

The tiara Christine wears is for her upcoming birthday. In the Filipino culture it is called a Debut (pronounced Deh-boo) which is the coming of age tradition that happens when a young person turns 18. I will be photographing this special event in June so stay tuned!!

Enjoy all the photos from this portrait session in the slideshow:

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November is right around the corner and I’m posting an update on what Photos by Rowell is working on. At the top of the list is Sheree and Scott’s wedding photos. I’m going through each photo and they are turning out really well.

I’ve booked two other photoshoots:

Nathan & Riley Child Photography Portraits

I’m looking forward to working with these two kids. We’ll be working in their parents’ home and then moving to the neighborhood park to get some creative playground shots. Hopefully, the kids won’t notice me as much with the camera and act naturally but most importantly, listening to me and their parents to get the shots they want. For this I’ll be focusing on using the Canon 50mm 1.2L. I’m pretty excited to get some sweet child photography bokeh.

DJ Misha Urban Photography Portraits

Mid-November This project is currently on hold. I will have the pleasure of working with San Diego’s house Dj, DJ Misha. Just a little bio on Misha:

Born in the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, DJ Misha relocated to the United States in 1991 and settled down in San Diego, California. Misha has held residencies at some of the finer clubs San Diego has to offer: Envy at The Ivy Hotel, Jack’s in La Jolla and Harneys Sushi in Old Town. He became the preferred dj for San Diego Euro Circle events, and was selected to play major fundraising events for the San Diego City Ballet and Rady Childrens Hospital.

For my own personal taste, I’ll be photographing the boats in the San Diego harbor with the downtown skyline as the backdrop. I’m also looking forward to photographing my friends and I for breakfast. The food better be great because I’ll be reviewing it here on my blog! Lastly, there will be some technology photographed and presented. You’ll see the hardware that this blog runs on. The backbone of the interwebs.

Sounds quite a lot to get done starting now through the end of November. I’m always looking for new ideas and projects so if you have any, comment it in!

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Many times I have done wedding photography and portrait photography against the sun and depending on how you see this situation you can either get bad pictures or succeed and get creative pictures.

1. Use a lightmeter..

To get a sense of what exposure you will need to properly light your back lit subject

2. Use your on-camera flash

Pop that sucker and light up your model. You’ll at least get to see the person’s face.

3. Use an external flash (1, 2 or more..)

It will be a lot better than using your on-camera flash.. a lot more powerful too. But of course you’ll need something to trigger these, such as a pocket wizard.

4. Use a smaller aperture

Try to reduce how much the sun fills your scene. With the use of the on camera flash you can most likely get a decent shot this way. It can also create a nice effect on the sun.

5. Use a reflector

Become friends with the sun and reflect it back to your subject. Gold can create a nice effect but you can also use white to minimize the blindness to your model.

6. Don’t backlight

Turn your model so that the sun does not become a backlight. Have the sun light up your subject from an angle.

7. Photoshop

Play around with different settings in Photoshop to make it a little brighter, such as using Curves and Levels.

8. Turn it into a silhouette

Silhouettes always turn out beautiful. This is where your subject is back lit and turns black in the foreground

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My new wedding photography and portrait photography site is up and running on the internet! I am now booking winter and summer weddings and portraits right now. My site is composed of html, css and flash. On the home page you will see a flash sequence of wedding photographs and portraits. If you scroll downthere is some content about the site and on the bottom right is my contact form.

The top of each link will have either a flash slideshow or a picture and you can scroll down to see more content.  I have included a link to the site on the left hand side of this blog or you can simply browse to www.photsobyrowell.com

The site was designed by Scott Blair of Esbee Designs. Many thanks go to him for creating a marvelous site.

When you do browse through the site, please take not of any suggestions or concerns please let me know in this post’s comment thread. Thank you everyone out there!

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