Last week, I had the pleasure of photographing this young lady. Riley, 10 1/2 years old, is an aspiring actor. She needed headshots for  for an upcoming national auditioning event. Riley came to the studio with her mom, and we had Maria Dominici, the fabulous makeup artist, who applied a very light and natural makeup on Riley.  The image above will be used for her picture on a comp card to give out at the auditions. I wanted a natural, fresh and engaging feel for this image, and Riley was able to deliver the look with ease.

Here are a few more images from the shoot:

Yes, those are her real eyelashes! Are you jealous, Ladies?

Riley is a charming, engaging young girl with lots of spunk and personality. And she certainly won me over when she told me she’d chosen me over the other photographers because I was the best looking one they considered. Ha! She’s going to do well in the world of acting.  Can’t wait to see her name in big lights on Broadway!

Is there a budding young actor in your family? I’d love to photograph her or him!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Today I’m posting a couple of images from a recent shoot with Nicky, a college student and aspiring model, with whom I’ve worked several times. Joanna Kirchon did the lovely makeup for these pictures. 

In both of these images, I’m trying some new ideas on backgrounds. In the image above, we shot on a white background. I laid in the red/pink in a Photoshop “plug-in” program called Nik Color Efex Pro. The idea was to complement the color of the lips.

In the second image, we also shot on a white background. I laid in the background picture, which is actually a stock photo I purchased. Lots of editing to try to get the two images to fit together believably.

Thank you, Nicky and Joanna for a great shoot!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

In a recent studio shoot with Amelia, a NYC-based actor and graduate student in drama education, we created this glamour image. The original image is shown below; the image above is a “high key” version.

The high key look is very popular today in fashion magazines – bright, dramatic, but still maintaining sharp details. From my original image file, I converted to a high key look with NIk Color Efex Pro, a terrific “plug-in” software that works with Adobe Photoshop. The conversion took just a few clicks – doing it manually would have been a fair amount of time-consuming work.

Which version of the image do you like better?  I’d love to hear from you!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

My new friend, Matt Shea, does video production – plus a lot of other things around various forms of media. In fact, his business name, which says it best, is Matt of All Media. Check out Matt’s website.  Matt asked me to take some pictures that could be used on his website and for other purposes. We had a fun shoot creating these images last week.

Matt is a real pro and a nice fellow to boot. He’s preparing a short marketing video for me (stay tuned!).  If you need a video produced for your business, talk to Matt.

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

I seem to be shooting women and their dogs these days – and having a ball doing it! The first one was Woman’s Best Friend. Today is Part Two. Pictured above is Crockett, named for the street she lives on, and below is Crockett with Stuart.

I’d love to photograph you with your dog!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

I love flowers, but I know next to nothing about them – especially the names. I had to ask my spouse, who told me this was an amaryllis. Hoping I spelled it correctly. Our dear friend Jill knows about flowers – she even knows how to grow them – to wit, these lovely specimens. 

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Last week, I received two wonderful notes from clients.  The mom of this young fellow wrote as follows:

Blake, I’m so impressed by your photos of our boys (34 and 9 mos). We have taken them to several professional photographers and your shoot was, by far, the most fun and rewarding. Just look at the photos! You skillfully captured their innocence, joy and individual personalities.

I want to thank you for working with us to create photos of Zach which compliment photos we have of Ben at the same age. You listened to us and I think that went a long way in making the shoot a success. Further, you were very thoughtful to buy the white blanket for Zach’s photos and I hope you get good use out of it. You also got the boys to sit together for a professional photo – a first for us.

Both of our sons were 2lb preemies and are now big, healthy boys. The NICU nurses loved your photos and are so proud of how well their former charges are doing, and we can’t wait to share your photos with other NICU parents to give them hope that these kids don’t stay small forever.

Blake, I look forward to working with you again. You were a real delight. Lis      

And then, a NYC-based actor sent this note:                                

Dear Blake,

 These pictures are amazing! I’m speechless… they are absolutely breathtaking. I think I’ll have to get a new comp card now!  I had no idea what you were thinking of doing with the raw images, or at least I couldn’t imagine how they might come out, and I am absolutely thrilled and impressed with your artistry.  Wonderful work.   I hope you are happy with them as well and I can’t wait to do another shoot.

 Thanks again Blake,     Amelia

I’m honored and humbled by these words. One of the great joys of being a portrait  photographer is having the images appreciated and cherished by the subject – or the parents of the subject.

Thank-you, Lis, and Thank-you, Amelia!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

These images are from a recent shoot with my friend Amelia, an actress based in New York. She is also a graduate student in drama education.

In all three of these images, I used a bit of vignetting, which is darkening around the edges. The idea of a vignette is to draw attention to the main subject.  Does this work for you? I’d love to hear what you think!

In trying to come up a catchy title for this post, I thought of the old song, “Devil with The Blue Dress On.” But Amelia is about as far away from the devil as one can be!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

The Spring  days are getting longer, nature is bringing forth new life, and this Sunday is Easter- the day of  Resurrection – in the Christian tradition.  How better to represent New Life than with a young baby!

This is Zachary, a nine- month old. He’s a happy kid and he modeled for me brilliantly this week.

Zachary and his brother were great sports during about two hours of shooting. Their mom  and their nanny kept the boys occupied with toys, funny faces and some good munchies along the way. Here’s brother Benjamin, three years old.

One more picture of Zachary. When I photograph young kids, I try to imagine what the world will be like when they’re 21 or 50 years old – or even my advanced age! In this time of New Life, I pray for a peaceful world for these two wonderful boys. In this last image, can you see Zachary looking ahead to his future?

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.

Last week, I had the privilege of shooting with Aubrey, an experienced – and lovely – model. We photographed a variety of concepts, but I wanted to just show three of the headshots in this post.

These were all taken with a fairly strong back light, which wraps around Aubrey’s face and, combined with a “beauty dish” as a front light, provides a very flattering look. This second image, below, was a bit more contrasty than the others.

As with many of my portraits, we kept the compositions simple, including bare shoulders and a very natural makeup. Thank you, Aubrey, for a wonderful shoot!

Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.