Benji Mast's Photoblog » Portraiture

John and Heidi

Benji Mast — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:17:51 +0000

What a great wedding! My sister Heidi Mast did a lot of the posing and I did a lot of the shooting. It worked pretty well, IMO, but you decide. Drop your thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

This was my sister, Heidi’s, idea. These sweet old school desks worked perfectly.

Gage and Amy

Benji Mast — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:28:48 +0000

Update: Comments aren’t working right now. Please hold your thoughts until I get this resolved. Thanks for your kind support.
Update 2:My genius brother fixed it. Comments are working again.

Gage and Amy were truly delightful to shoot. I really enjoyed myself. We had some great locations to shoot at. First we went down to this epic railroad bridge, then we moved up to a park in town, and finally grabbed some shots at a sweet coffee shop.

Gage and Amy

Benji Mast — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:45:58 +0000

Coming soon…

Joel and Hilda

Benji Mast — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:48:13 +0000

I am finally ending my longest ever sabbatical from blogging. I wonder if anyone still reads this blog. Hopefully you all use RSS readers, at the bottom is a short, simple explination on how to get started with an RSS reader if you haven’t already.

Update: Miriam, Joel’s mother, has this to say about the first picture.

“The very first picture shows the Iwashige family crest on the Japanese lantern that hung to the side of the arch through which all the guests walked into the reception hall.

I wrote earlier about how I found the lantern at an estate sale in Hutchinson. While there are many family crest designs similar to this, this is exactly the version that belongs to Hiromi’s family. The coincidence of having found this one in Hutchinson, Kansas is just too amazing. I’m sure the family that first owned the lantern thought of it only as an interesting Asian-looking design. (The wife had spent part of her childhood in China.)”

Heidi patiently served as a voice-activated light stand. One flash through umbrella, camera right.

A bit more tech info on the light here… I simply used an umbrella at around 1/2 power for the main light camera left, and a bare flash at 1/16 or so from the back, as a hair light. The hair light didn’t work exactly the way I was intending, as it clearly doesn’t reach everyone’s hair.

As always, random comments and observations are very welcome. Thanks.

Conrad, Rebekka…

Benji Mast — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:09:12 +0000

…Ketura, and the brand new David Jonathan Yoder, invited Heidi and I over to take pictures of their family. They were looking for birth announcement images.

I don’t know which are mine and which are Heidi’s. We traded cameras several times, and I lost track. I will say this, Heidi is great with kids and has great sense for what feels and looks good, so if it’s great, it’s probably Heidi. I think I may have taken roughly half of these.

#1 or #2?