Portraits | di Sogno Photography

Category: Portraits

More Executive Portraits

0 Comments October 23, 2012|Tony|Commercial, Portraits

Over the past month or so I’ve had the pleasure of creating executive portraits for friends who have now become my clients.

Debra Scott, a registered representative of Vining Financial Services, Inc., a financial investment firm located in Marietta, GA, needed to update her portrait. Debra enjoys educating clients about investment planning when she’s not having a good time with her family. She had been telling me that she was going to come see me and after a few weeks, and she finally did! We had a fun time creating her portraits.

Another friend, W. Wright Dempsey Jr., is an attorney providing full legal services with emphasis on estate planning and probate, construction, personal injury, commercial, and cultural conservation matters in Dunwoody, GA. A person with diverse interests, it isn’t everyone who can sport a bow tie and look great doing it! He even taught me how to tie one, yes, that is a real bow tie, not a clip-on.

I’ve known both of these folks for a couple of years now and I occasionally have a breakfast with them. I’m happy that they chose me to update their portraits for both online and collateral usage. If you happen to need their services or know of someone who does, Google them to find their contact information.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to shoot as I love to create executive portraits!

Interdev Executives

0 Comments September 28, 2012|Tony|Commercial, Portraits

I’m happy to announce another successful shoot of some local executives. The folks over at Interdev, LLC, a Managed IT and Security company, needed portraits of their management team for their website. It took some planning to get everyone together but as you can see from the images below, it happened and everyone is pleased with the results. You can see the images here on their site and I really appreciate that they entrusted me to create their images.

An executive portrait is just one of my services I enjoy creating for my clients. From products, to specialty images, I enjoy talking to my clients and getting to know them and their business. That enables me to create the images that let them shine!

OyToy Products

0 Comments July 5, 2012|Tony|Commercial, Portraits

Last month I had the opportunity to shoot products for OyToys.com. This website sells clothing items, toys and puzzles to a very large and specific market.

When RuthE, the owner of the site, accepted my bid, she said she was bringing not only the items for the shoot, but the models also. After the models in the images below arrived at the studio with their mothers, I was able to sit back and enjoy taking photos because their mom’s corralled the little ones, and got them dressed in the different items that RuthE wanted to shoot. I also used RuthE as a designer for the accessories on the ‘modelettes’ so they looked the way she wanted them shot.

Reagan is wearing a bib embroidered in Yiddish. Originally, she was to model a baby blanket but she didn’t like being wrapped up in it. When we put her in this bib her face brightened. Can you imagine, having an attitude at that age?! 🙂 The bib was obviously something she enjoyed modeling!

Eliana, pictured below, was having a great time in front of the camera, so much so that it was difficult to show the embroidery on the blanket. But, she was so cute that I just had to shoot images of her with the blanket wrapped around her even though you can’t see the embroidery. Yes, we did get images with the embroidery showing, so we were successful.

This is one of many puzzle products that OyToys.com sells. Our oldest model, Daniel, no more that 4 years old, enjoyed solving this puzzle. He also like mugging for the camera!

A fun shoot with little models full of personality, we just had to find what worked for them.

Till the next time!

The Power of an Image

0 Comments May 7, 2012|Tony|General, Portraits

Believe it or not, images speak. They can say many things and be very powerful. An image can say “I want you!”, “I’m in charge here!” or “Come on in, we’re glad to see you!” It takes a collaboration between the subject and the photographer to create an image that says the right things.

When Pierre came in to the studio for his executive portraits, he had a challenge for me. He wanted images that were friendly and casual but conveyed a tone that said “I’m the expert.” As a successful franchiser, they had to convey his friendliness, approachability and confidence; images that could be used in magazines and newspapers or in corporate communications.

By finding a pose that fit the criteria and having him change only his expression we captured images that expressed those messages.

Successful people like Pierre come to me for their images because they want them to say many things and I can help them create the images that express exactly what they want say.

Shooting for a Class

0 Comments September 23, 2011|Tony|Education, Portraits

In the next month or so, I’ll be starting up a beginners course in using a digital SLR camera and how to take better photos. I’d have thought that with all of the images I’ve taken in and around the Atlanta area, I’d have everything I needed to visually demonstrate the various concepts outlined in the course. But that wasn’t the case. To fill in the holes, I placed a casting call on a popular modeling site; Rachael Boone answered the call and the shoot was scheduled. Two of the concepts we shot were lens perspective and the effects of aperture on the image.

We started in a small square in the Roswell Historic District that’s quiet, has fairly low foot traffic and shops that show in the background. Rachael posed so the shops were to her back and I started across the square from her using a long focal length lens. The lens perspective effect is seen by keeping the subject, in this case Rachael, the same size in the frame and shoot with a consecutively shorter focal length lens.

This series demonstrates the effects lens perspective has on images. At 400mm, the image shows the effects of lens compression and it looks as though Rachael is directly in front of the shops. As the focal length decreases, the images start to show depth and finally at 24mm, it looks as though the shops are very far away.

The lens aperture used to create an image has large effect on the image too. It creates the depth of field, the area in the image that is in focus, in the image. Depth of field can bring the total image in to sharp focus or allow the photographer to keep only the subject in focus and thus keep the viewers attention there.

In these images, at the shallow depth of field an aperture of f/2.8 creates, the foliage behind Rachael has a pleasant blur and the viewers attention is drawn to her great smile. An aperture of f/27, creates a large depth of field and adds the probability that the viewer will glance at Rachael but then start scanning the image to see what else may be in it.

These are just small tastes of what will be covered in the class. I’m looking forward to starting it up and transferring some of the knowledge I picked up as commercial photographer over the years.

I also want to thank Rachael for helping me in creating these images. She made my job much easier! Stay tuned for more info about the “Introduction to DSLR Photography and Taking Better Photos” class.

Looking for an Atlanta photographer…

0 Comments September 12, 2011|Tony|Commercial, Education, Portraits

“I ‘googled’ using terms like ‘Atlanta’, ‘Alpharetta’, ‘head shot’ and ‘photographer’ while looking for someone to create my image. You came up in the search. I looked at a couple of other websites prior to viewing yours and compared to those sites, I thought yours was very professional, well done and easy to navigate. When I looked at your images, I knew you were the photographer I wanted to create mine.” Steve said that when I was curious and asked how he had found me. Because he’s a salesman at a technology company, I wasn’t surprised when he answered using search terms instead of just saying “Google”.

He’s been with his company for a while now and they’ve long asked him to get a professional head shot done for their website, marketing and sales collateral, and to have something to use for speaking engagements.

The images were created on a standard white background to make them as generic as possible. Steve, being a bit more discerning, wanted his images to stand out more. Working some Photoshop magic, I exchanged the standard white background with a mid-grey color and added a gradient to separate him from the background.

Backgrounds make a new image!

Both images are fantastic and although I’ve been doing this for a while now, it sometimes surprises me how a change like this creates a different feel to the image. Steve decided to go with the image on the right. What do you think?

As an Atlanta photographer I strive to separate myself from the pack and it’s always nice to hear when people notice. I want to thank Steve for being so detailed in his answer to my query and for choosing me to create his executive portrait.