If you read this post, you remember that I love the fair. Well, I made good on my plans and went to the Minnesota State Fair a total of three times. In a row! The first night I had a session with the lovely Anna, who was accompanied by her mom and her friend Mike (her mom Sue sent me the behind-the-scenes snapshot above!). I prepared Anna in advance for the attention she was going to get as I photographed her, especially in the images where we were using Mike as a human light stand to hold my flash and umbrella. (A note to photographers: the state fair media folks are super nice and accommodating, but they do ask that you receive prior approval to shoot on the midway, so make sure you do that if you’ll be using a model when you go next year, like we did!)
Attention she did get! Other fair-goers were taking pictures of her with their cells phones, people would come up behind me and whisper, “Who IS she?” and we were asked more than once what magazine we were shooting for.
Well, Anna’s a teenager who agreed to be photographed amid thousands of fair enthusiasts on a busy Friday night! We had so much fun, and it was great to experiment with lighting. We used natural light, natural light with reflectors and some off-camera flash.
Here are just some of my favorites! Thank you, Anna, Mike and Sue!
