Fion & Tomomi Beach Portrait Session | Sand Key Park, Clearwater Beach, Florida | Atlanta Destination Photographer

Over the extended 2011 Christmas holiday weekend, I traveled down to Florida to photograph Zainab & Farhan’s beautiful wedding in Fort Myers. The day before the first day of the ceremonies, I met up with Fion, Tomomi, and Vincent to do some portrait practice at Sand Key Park on Clearwater Beach. While the weather was amazing in the upper 70’s in December, we didn’t get a dramatic sunset with not a cloud in the sky. We still had a ton of fun of course taking photos and experimenting with camera settings while doing this mini workshop with Vincent.

After playing around on Clearwater Beach for a while we brought out the strobe for some more practice. Luckily Fion’s husband Vincent did not mind carrying around the Ranger’s battery pack as my assistant. A quick behind the scenes photo on the left of our set up.

These were all shot with the Varistar umbrella since this was before we purchased the new Rotalux Deep Octa. It still gives a nice quality of light diffusion. Here are a few more on the rocks on the corner of Sand Key Park with a bit more ambient light as we caught the last rays of light for the day.

For the final shots I showed Vincent some slow shutter techniques to really make the waves and mist stand out. Our final two shots before dinner:

After a great seafood dinner at Crabby Bill’s, it was time for “FengLong After Dark” and we got a chance to practice light painting with the girls against the backdrop of the Gulf of Mexico. Even along Clearwater Beach at night we were still getting some light pollution from the condominiums and hotels along Beach Drive but we were still able to pull off a few fun test photos. These next photos are all SOOC or Straight Out Of Camera, meaning NO Photoshop or other manipulation, all created using one single photo and various lights.

…and a few outtakes from us standing around and testing all of the lights to get everything just right =)

We definitely had a great time experimenting with different portrait poses on the beach, using off camera flash with high powered strobes, and light painting with people after dark! Thank you Fion, Tomomi, and Vincent for spending the evening with me on Clearwater Beach!

One last reminder, Tuesday night is my Astrophotography Learnshop about shooting the stars and Time-Lapse photography! View this previous post for more information and see you there maybe on Tuesday night with the 100 people who have signed up to attend!