On a Tuesday night (I took these last week), my roommate asked if it was possible to take portrait shots of him so that he can upload a profile picture for his research lab he is working with, which he needed by Friday. Luckily, thanks to me changing my major back to mechanical engineering, allowing me to drop a class, I had plenty of free time, so we decided to take pictures the next day by Old Main in the evening. He needed a close up head shot for the profile picture, so we knocked that out first. We decided the plants by Old Main would make for a good backdrop, especially because the green would contrast the colors of his suit and the light from the setting sun. I offered to Photoshop out his bandaids that he forgot to remove, but he said to leave them, so that's what I did.

Just to make sure he had a variety of professional photos to use in the future, I took some more photos of him in different poses. The fountain makes for a good backdrop, although at this time it's shaded from the sun. However, it causes the plants and Old Main in the background to be highlighted. I didn't try it at the time, but I wish there was a way to use a lower shutter speed to make the water behind the fountain look more "flowey". I probably could achieve this by combining multiple shots, but since we were on a bit of a time crunch I didn't try doing this. Maybe some other time in the future, perhaps?

Lastly, I decided to get some shots at angles and that showed more of his full body so that he would have more variety with the photos he has. I felt these images came out well by using Old Main as the background.

I edited his favorites that night so he would have the pictures immediately, and then I worked on the rest over the course of the week. I'm definitely glad he asked me to do this, since I've been looking to do some more portrait shots, also with male subjects to show that hey, I can take pictures of guys, too.

Starting to publish and share my photography has been interesting and exciting. You can meet so many cool people by doing so and find new opportunities. For example, I published my picture from my earlier blog post, "My Car", to my Instagram page, and the Cars of ASU (@carsofasu) page commented on it, with one of the admins saying he owns an Accord, too. And by "Accord", I mean identical Accord: 2008 Honda Accord sedan in the EX-L trim line with White Pearl Metallic paint and sand/beige/tan interior. So, we decided to have a photoshoot together with our Accords at Tempe Town Lake.

Both of us regularly go out to shoot supercars/exotic cars/expensive cars, but it was nice shooting our cars. After all, these are what we drive everyday. For me, it was especially exciting to meet another Accord owner who both loves cars and likes the car he drives. It felt good appreciating our cars for what they had to offer, including an actually-pretty-decent amount of power and pull (hey, 268hp and 244 lb-ft of torque, especially in the era when V6 muscle cars could barely make above 200 with larger V6 engines, is pretty good). It was also cool talking about the small details of the car that only comes from long ownership, such as the leather on the center armrest peeling off or being able to feel exactly when VTEC kicks in (yo).

But, the sun was setting and we already got yelled at by the people who patrol the lake for parking in front of the boat-launching area, so we decided to relocate and try some more photography.

We ended up going onto the Mill Avenue bridge that crosses over Tempe Town Lake and parking on the side. Oh, the things that you feel safer about doing when someone is with you. Neither of us would do this alone, after all. Since it was dark, i decided to try some long exposures, not only to help overcome the darkness, but to also create light streams past our cars.

It's fun shooting with other people, not only because you feel more emboldened to try new shots, but also because you can talk about photography with them. As we waited for the exposures to finish, we talked about long exposures and other photography styles, continuing our conversations from Tempe Town Lake.

Eventually, we came to the point where we agreed that we've taken "enough" pictures, since we both know how it is: we plan for some time to take photos, spend double the amount of time planned taking photos, and still feel disappointed in how all the images are coming out. So, with photos taken, information exchanged, and each other better known, we left the bridge in our cars. (And also the photos did come out pretty well.)

Thanks to Hemang at Cars of ASU for the shoot!

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