I’ve been waiting to work with Mary Catey for about six months. This girl quite busy and with this kind of look and versatility it is easy to see why. Mary Catey can go from sweet and innocent to naughty vixen in the blink of an eye and has an incredible gift of expression with those piercing blue eyes.

For those technically inclined, this series was lit with 2 300ws strobes fired with 1 shoot thru and 1 reflective umbrella for just the right kind of contrast. I was able to get the white background on just those two lights.

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If you read any articles related to photography, all of the experts will tell you to avoid shooting during the noon hours, because of harsh sunlight. You can get around this by taking large strobes and “overpowering” the sun with them, or you can work with the sunlight and create some interesting shadows. We set out to do interesting shadows and I, only armed with a single flash wanted to see what kind of results I could yield. I think these turned out pretty darned good, although these don’t really fall within what I would call my typical style.

A couple of points about Alisia.

- We have a great working relationship. I can call her up any time and say, “hey, let’s go shoot” and she’ll be there. She’s very diverse, talented and knows how to work a camera. It helps that she thinks I’m funny, so it is easy to get her smiling and laughing through photos.
- I’ve decided that if I do any more work with Alisia (we have something scheduled for tomorrow), I’m going to create a special category for her on my blog.
- She’s really open minded. I wont ask her to do anything too outlandish or out of the ordinary, but she’s full of ideas and experience.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I’ve also discovered that I have some mixed feelings about some of the more popular Photoshop Actions that are so widely used around the web. I do like simple, clean images with clear and natural color (or simple black & white). Some color shifting can be fun, but there is a fine line between a little creativity and outlandish surreality.

One of the advantages of shooting outdoors it that there is always an interesting backdrop to be had here in New Mexico, even in the late fall, early winter.

These are pulled from a photoshoot I did several weeks back. Josh was a good sport and despite the fact that the wind was pretty chilly (for us New Mexicans), he did great. I look forward to hooking up with Josh again for some indoorsy type of work.

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