Ahna and I headed downtown Denver. The original idea was to shoot some nudes downtown, but we decided to head towards Union Station before the sun went down to capture some blue hour shots. It turned out that the streets were way to busy to try to sneak in some nudes, so we ended up doing a little bit of a fashion shoot. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t shoot outside much and I never shoot at night. So this was a learning experience for me. I also shot with an expensive 85mm f1.4 lens that I seldom pull out of the closet, so that was another layer of complexity for me. We just wandered around within a few blocks of Union Station looking for some interesting spots to shoot. As yet another challenge for me, I didn’t bring any flash with me. I was going to try to shoot using only existing light.
As we looked for locations, I was looking primarily for useable light, and secondarily, for interesting compositional elements. This bridge was the first place we stopped. I was getting the last little bit of golden light through the open space near the end of the bridge. I got lots of out of focus images because I’m not used to shooting with such a narrow depth of field. Ahna was great to work with because once I found a place to position her, I really didn’t need to direct much. She just did her thing and I only made small adjustments, more related to her position relative to the existing light or compositional features than her posing. (Note that you can click any image to open it up in a lightbox and full screen and then scroll through the gallery. There are multiple galleries in this post if you keep scrolling down.)
Then we walked over to the Millennial bridge. The light by this time was below the horizon, so the existing light was flat, but Ahna made good use of the guy wires. Of course, she had to climb them. Then we moved up onto the bridge where we made use of various lights that were coming on as the sun continued to drop further behind the horizon. There were lots of great geometric lines and shapes that we could make use of. I switched over to my cheap zoom lens capture more of the environment (focal length on these is anywhere from 25mm to 105mm). Of course, it’s not an Ahna shoot unless she’s climbing something.Â
Walking back to Union Station, there were these interesting concrete features near one of the platforms. I don’t know what their for, but they someone had the good sense to turn them into art with this fun banding. We had mixed light in that area with a cool blue light coming from the platform (camera right), some warm tungsten light coming from behind the structures (camera left), a white street light on a pole behind me, and some green light illuminating the interior of one of the structures. It made a very unique background element for these. These were shot on my 85mm lens, f1.4, 125th of a second, at ISO 1600.
Then we headed towards the main platforms. The pot light beside this support column was very directional and because there was nothing nearby to reflect the light, it gave the column the appearance of a beam of light. And because the column is obviously round, we got this nice gradation of shadow on the vertical edges. You’ll notice that Ahna’s face is pointed into the light in almost all the images, but it was particularly important here because of the strong directionality of the light. Another nice feature between the columns was this slated wall. I didn’t look to see what was causing the ragged shadow patterns, but it was an interesting shape and divided the frame into two graphic chunks. You can see that Ahna is still standing beside the column. I’ve just changed my position by 90 degrees. There’s strong contrast between her and the background and the light bouncing off the column is acting like a fill light, so more of her body is light compared to the previous images.
For the last images, I used the curves of the platform shelters as a compositional element. You can see the lamp post that I used for light and had Ahna stay near it as I varied my shooting angles. Of course there is lots of visual noise, so I shot these at f1.4. I almost never shoot at those shallow depths of field, but it was the best option to get some background separation. Luckily most of these were in focus. I included the Union Station sign in a few for context.
I want to give Ahna a big loving thank you! She’s been an amazing collaborator over the years, who is artistically fearless and always shows up. She’s encouraged and pushed me and was there for me that evening when I didn’t have my emotional support flash. 🙂
Follow her accounts on Instagram:
@ahna.greener
@ahna.g_art