M Wano in Kansas City (Patreon)

The first time I left my time zone I drove 16 hours across the country with a taxidermy fox to Kansas City.  When I arrived there was Mary on the other end of the road.  She has a warmth that made me feel like I was instantly home again.  Over 100,000 miles later Mary and I finally had our second shoot.  I’ve ditched the fox since then, and really matured as a photographer, and I think we’ve created something really really special.

The outdoor portion of our shoot had to be quick...very quick.  It was supposed to be the golden hour, but a massive thunder storm was rapidly approaching.  What would have ordinarily been the best time of day to shoot was nearly night.  We had all of five minutes before the sky was going to let loose on us, and so we shot as quickly as possible.  I used my 17-40mm at F4 ISO 4000 for these probably shooting at 1/20th or 1/15th of a second.  When I'm dealing with light that incredibly low normally I'd spring for a tripod but we were trying to beat the storm so I threw the camera into burst mode.  I've found that this way when I'm holding the shutter down my first and last images tend to have some camera shake, but everything in between is nice and sharp since my finger isn't moving the camera.  Its a little trick I picked up way back when I used to shoot bands.

Five or 6 poses in the woods, and it was just too dark to continue, and then the rain came.  Not wanting our shoot to be over we booked a hotel downtown and shot some more playful portraits.  Lucky me the hotel had a few mirrors I could play around with using my 85mm F1.4.  Since I hadn't brought lights on this last trip all of these were shot using the available light in the room.  Small lamps and a single over head light were just enough when shooting around ISO 3200.  Lots of high ISO on this trip.  I'm learning to love the noise, and work with it as best I can.

I can't wait to get back to Kansas City and have another shoot with Mary...this time hopefully less time will pass between our meet ups.   

-Corwin

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jcn28nqufhm0nz4/AABCs89v3U1FS863VnCNTfdAa?dl=0