Night Photography with Friends in Salt Lake City

Julie and I got together with friends to do some random night photography in the streets of SLC.  We chose the dirtiest alley we could find (this one may have been a little too dirty) as evidenced from the next 3 images. This alley came complete with grime, bird feces, cockroaches, urine smell, a dead pigeon, and who knows what else.

All the following images were processed consistent with the tone of the locale (high contrast, dark, and dirty).  We hope you like them. We did a similar event last year that you can check out here.



We used a three-light setup using colored gels to add a little more feel to the light. The key light was warmed with an orange gel, the fill used a blue gel which mostly contributed to the shadows, and another light down the alley in which we alternated, green, purple, and red gels to give a splash of color on the alley wall. So fun.
Luckily, Julie wore a red shirt which just popped out of the scene and also matched her popsicle! Did I mention Julie is amazingly beautiful?  Check below to find where to get a delicious popsicle in the dark alley’s of SLC.





One of the images we neglected to get was a group shot of the photographers; however, I did take this image of Kate.


Meet Jim, an MBA student at the University of Utah (or maybe a recent graduate). He and his wife came up with this idea to make a little extra cash at night. He was nice enough to let us take his portrait. I’m sure Jim comes across a lot of strange experiences; however, I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect to find us. So if you ever meet Jim downtown, buy a popsicle and say hello.



Next, meet Christian and Danielle. They were kind enough to spend a few minutes being photographed. As you can tell they are a lot of fun.

 

This is Rommey. He was pretty enthusiastic about having his portrait taken. We hope you had a great time!



Andy the collections guy has a very happy disposition and this is as scary as I could convince him to look despite all my best efforts. :)



I experienced several emotions during the evening. I started off with a little boredom with the locale.



However, this quickly turned to crisis as the walls started closing in around me.  I was in a dark and dirty alley after all!



This finally gave way to a resolute wash of emotion and strength to face my environment.



Finally it became clear that I watched too much ninja turtles as a kid……



After our adventures in the dark alley, we moved to a new location with some fun stairs. Julie caught this one while were we setting up.  The green and red come from gelled strobes in the background.



We found these University of Utah students hanging out and asked to take their portraits. For this setup we used four lights. Two in front (one above and to the left with a warming gel, one to the right with some neutral density gels to knock down the light output a little, and the two strobes in back to provide some color and rim light.  



We had a really fun time haning out with the other photographers and meeting all these people. We hope you enjoyed looking at these images; although, I’m certain we had more fun taking them.  You can catch a few more in the web gallery here.