First week of 50/50 project
Last week I started a project in a countdown fashion; where I want to post 1 picture a day for the reminding days of 2012, up to December 31st. Those pictures have to be done using a full-frame camera with a 50 mm lens, total duration of this challenge is 50 days.
Pictures could be portrait but not limited to them, you can check all pictures on my Flick photostream, I want to make a remark of two black and white portraits that I have included in it.
One is a portrait of my wife done using just available light from the ceiling at home. ISO 1600, f1.4, 1/80 s; some post-process done in Lightroom and Photoshop.
The second one is a portrait of one my friends, she is wearing a Halloween costume; this portrait was done at my studio in Ann Arbor using multiple lights and light modifiers, ISO 400, f5.6, 1/160 s; also some post-process in Lightroom and Photoshop was used.
I will try to include more portrait in this project.
Fashion-Senior Portrait
This post is about other of my favorite high school senior photoshoots done in studio this season. Other was published last month; multi-location senior portrait.
This session was for a young man, Emmanuel. He is a very enthusiastic senior and willing to follow directions during the session. We tried good variety of looks and some props. All photo-session was planned for a fashion style.
First we went for a casual winter look (blue jeans and yellow jacket) with an editorial touch in the post-process of the picture.

Then we went for elegant vintage look, using as prop my Argus seventy-five camera.

We went through other 3 looks, from elegant, to country look, and back to casual, like the next picture, blue jeans and yellow polo shirt, plus the touch of glasses and scarf.

We had a lot of fun in the session!
Thanks to Emmanuel and his family for the opportunity of work with him.
Senior Portrait in multiple locations of Ann Arbor
Starting this fall, I had the opportunity of have a multiple photographic sessions, to make senior portraits of Mercedes. She is a senior in Pioneer High School of Ann Arbor, MI. It was very fun to work with her.
First, we had a studio session. We did pictures with different outfits; we tried some classic formal poses. Also, we tried some very fun and informal poses, jumping spinning, playing with expressions and hands like this:

Funny expressions
Second, because she is a great racquetball player (US junior team) we went to a racquetball court in Ann Arbor. We got some very good action and editorial shoots there.

Playing racquetball
Finally, we went to one of my favorite parks in Ann Arbor. There we made some very sweet shoots. In that session she brought and played her guitar.

Mercedes and her guitar, relaxing
Thank you Mercedes, and your parents, for allowing me to make your senior portraits.
Here is a small animation with more of the picture we got. It was made in Animoto.
Senior Portrait for class 2012 is opened
Hello Seniors class 2012.
There are many options in Ann Arbor and Southeast Michigan to get your Senior Portrait. I recommend Luis (me) of foto-activa.
There is a small animation with some examples of senior portraits, in studio and outdoor. Going from casual to editorial; from glamour to fashion.
With multiple options for the session, in studio and multiple outdoors locations.
Any consultation is free. Do not hesitate in contacting me.
Senior Portrait in studio II
This is the second part of a Senior Portrait session that I did last year, with multiple girls from High School in the Detroit area. Here is the link for the first part.
Again, in this post I am showing other 3 of those girls. They were not models, at lease on that day of that photo session.
Thanks to:
- Bianca Robinson – Makeup
- Leonor F – My assistant
- Fantasy On Film – Studio space
- All girls (models)


Senior Portrait in studio I
I had the opportunity of work with many High School Senior Students in the Detroit area; in collaboration with Bianca Robinson (MM#1554129) as makeup artist; currently she lives in Chicago, IL.
I did their Senior Portrait in two days. This session was done totally in Studio; we used different backgrounds for every girl. All picture where done in fashion style. And I used two lens (50 mm 1.8; and 70-200 mm f4L) and one canon camera for the whole session. And this was my first solo big photo shoot outside of Ann Arbor, MI.
In this post I am showing 3 of those girls. None of them had experience as model on the day of that photo session. However all did very well. In that same session we did pictures to more experienced models too (not senior students); examples of them were post last year.


April is the month for ” First communions ” in Ann Arbor
In Ann Arbor MI as many other cities, April is the month for First communions. It is is a Catholic Church ceremony, where many children (7-10 years old) take part on it . Also it is an other good opportunity to do some formal portraits, in location or in studio. Here, I am sharing some pictures of two beautiful girls, Marisol and Mariana. Usually girls wear white dresses. These pictures were done few days in advance of the Ceremony, in studio. But of course they could be done the same day; in the Church, outdoors (if weather permits) and studio.
Close up
I had the opportunity of work with some model and with a makeup artist of Detroit, MI area.
Bianca Robinson (MM#1554129) is a great young makeup artist. She is very hard worker. In a collaboration, she did the make up for some model and I did the photography.
Having a good makeup on the models makes all the work a lot easier on and after (post-process) the session.
Here I show some close ups from that session.
Taylor – Blue

Kristie – Blue
Stephanie - Silver
Amanda – Black
All this close ups were done using a canon 70-200 mm lens f4 L, one of my favorites lens for portrait.
On this photo-session my assistant was Leonor F, my wife. Thanks
Selfportrait
Just playing a little bit with the camera, I got some self-portrait. All of them were done in a single shot. It is not photoshop cloning. The only post-process that was done was for color adjustment and cropping; Lightroom was use for the post-processing.
- I just use a dark studio.
- 50 mm lens
- Long exposition 30 seconds, and
- Small aperture f11 or f22
- And remote trigger fire the strobes 2, 3 or 4 times.
I was just fun.
Winter in studio
Around middle of December, I had the opportunity of work with two models, Jamie T and Kristin P from Lansing and Grand Blanc, MI respectively.
One of the looks that we tried was related to Winter; we had fun, because the outfit was not really for winter as you could see on the following pictures. All were done using a 50 mm lens only.
Portrait of Kristin
Portrait of Jamie

Both models having fun.
As you could see it was not really cold inside the studio, we could tried few interesting poses. However outside winter was really cold as usual at Ann Arbor, MI



