Blog posts including recent work, tutorials, thoughts on photography and art and just day to day life!
February was blessedly warm and so we used the weather to do some portrait sessions. Here are some pictures with Nataly Divine BTS (Behind The Scenes). Nataly wore a beautiful 1920's style dress is ravishing red. This was a wet plate collodion session where we made some beautiful tintypes. Check out my 19th century photo site for the plates: sunandsilver.photo/portrait/riverside-tintypes-with-nataly/ Our first picture is a real BTS of Nataly Divine along with my Intrepid large format camera. Nataly is a true professional because she not only held this pose for the tintype but also for the digital photo. Next a…
This is a "guest post" from my analog photography site SunandSilver.photo While I love digital photography, I also have been doing a lot of analog photography including tintypes, Ambrotypes, gold and silver salt prints and cyanotypes. I think the principles I laid out for Sun and Silver.photo are the same as my digital photography so I shared them here too! Tintype principles for a new year. I had so much fun in 2023 making 19th century photography - tintypes, Ambrotypes, salt prints and cyanotypes. I think 2024 is going to be an amazing year. Often people choose New Years Day for resolutions but I…
I ran across some older photos of Kateri while working on our latest safari together. Hard to believe these photos were taken in 2019 because it feels just like yesterday. Time certainly flies when you are having fun! So enjoy a few memories with Kateri! https://www.jalanlee.com/modeling/test-with-kat/
The first collodion portrait pop up of the year is fast approaching. I still have a some openings on May 21 and 22 - contact me at jeff@jalanlee.com to book a time! Important Notes for the Popup All sessions will be outdoors - tintype collodion requires a lot of light for a good portrait. We have a 1 acre yard with lots of good places to take photos. The address is 676 Dartmouth Drive, Neenah. See in Google Maps. I am about 2 miles west of Hwy 41 (1 mile west of County Road CB). If you are coming from…
We will once again hosting a short series of free collodion portrait popups on May 21 & 22. All shoots will be outside between 10am and 5pm. Shooting in my one acre yard with lots of variety for background. We had a couple of popups late last Fall, just before the cold weather set in. This was an awesome chance to produce some portraits, meet some people and get some portrait practice in. This May we will be hosting a few more sessions to bump up our skills, practice fast plate processing and prepare for paid events in the Summer.…
Photography is based on light so one would think that night time photography is no good. However, I love creating portraits at night! I think it is about the control over the lighting you have. During the day everything is lit up so the contrasts are lessened and there are limits to what you can achieve. At night you can pick from fully dark to fully lit backgrounds and then add in light for your model. You can also use ambient light sources to create drama in ways that are not possible in the day. There are some challenges to…
Today's post is about my recent Cinestill 800 film model shoot. Cinestill is a unique film that is known to produce wild and unpredictable colors. Especially at night. People seem to love posting night time photos of gas stations with Cinestill for some reason but they typically don't use it for portraits. So keeping the outlier vibe we set out to shoot a few rolls of medium format portraits in downtown Appleton. The photo above highlights just how trippy the colors can be with this film. The fountain was red but came out a glowing pink and the water turned…
Where are the male models? Seems like everywhere I look female models outnumber male models by something like 50 to 1. Why is this? Lots of possible theories - some not so flattering! There are more men photographers (maybe) and they like women. Men may not be as interested in modeling. Women may like looking at other women more than they like looking at men. But I will say this - I like photographing people of all sizes and shapes and ages and genders. I look to capture that spark that I think everyone has. The spark is a gift…
