Snowy day portrait session with musician Brian Tess from The Black Ties
- Morgan Downs
- Jan 8
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 31
With the first snowfall of 2025 along the Jersey coastline, my good friend Brian and I planned to take portraits to promote his band, The Black Ties. It was a cold January day (as most January days in New Jersey are), but with a loose plan we set off. On our way to Ocean Grove for the first anticipated location we stopped along the Bradley Beach boardwalk to capitalize on the uncommon occasion of a snow covered beach. Typically when we do get snow at the beach it doesn't actually accumulate on the sand, and when it does it's often patchy at best. This unwrinkled blanket of snow paired with a somber sky worked perfectly to capture minimalistic shots from afar.
In the process of trying to refine a personal photographic style, I'm learning that I need to first recognize my own shooting patterns and techniques. With that said, I find that I have the tendency to photograph subjects with emphasis on the environment and utilizing the surroundings opposed to the close up portraits shot shallow where the background melts away into a blur leaving the subject's location indistinguishable.
Of the photos shot on this day these beach photos are my favorite –but that may be due to a personal bias for a couple of reasons. The first being that I have photographed all of these locations before but the snowy beach let me view the familiar scene from a new perspective. Additionally this first set of photos were taken using an old #leicaSummicron 50mm f/2 lens. My friend Knox sold me this lens during the Fall and while it really is "just a lens", I do genuinely find myself capturing memorable shots with it more on every occasion.
My 'mediocre' eyesight paired with a manual focus lens makes for the perfect combination of missing focus when shooting moving subjects. For this reason I closed the aperture down to f5.6 and only shot at f2 & f2.8 once Brian stopped moving.
As much as I would love to claim that I photographed the scene sampled above a bit dark so that I could preserve detail in the highlights, it was only it was 10% for that reason & 90% because my viewfinder was as maximum brightness. Before wrapping up at this first location I unpacked the #Contax #35mm camera loaded up with Fuji HQ iso 200 speed film (Which was likely expired) which I rated and shot at iso 100. I matched the settings of my Nikon to the Contax, but in hindsight should have taken more consideration to check the histogram along the way.
Film Shots Below
By the time we made it to the first anticipated location in Ocean Grove the sky was getting darker, making off camera flash a bit easier to utilize. It was much more difficult finding the proper shot however because I was trying to make aa certain type of shot work that just wasn't going to. Specifically using an orange colored filter (aka C.T.O. gel) on my flash to artificially & dramatically cool down the temperature of the background. While the end result was far too intense and a failure pragmatically, the process did work. In hind sight using a different light modifier may have been enough to fix the issue. Below is a photo demonstrating the product of color matching the CTO gel to correct skin tones and lower the ambient lighting's temperature.
After toiling with the results a bit, I decided the CTO gel wasn't doing it for me. I removed the gel, set my camera to self timer mode and placed it on my backpack to captured a series of pictures which I would later make a composite shot out of (cleaning up the shot by removing the C-stand). The composite shot with the C-stand removed is less distracting, but in my opinion second best.
Frozen to the bone but finally happy with what we captured here at the second location Brian & I decided to move on. By the time we made it to the 3rd and final location it was quite late in the day & with minimal time remaining we captured the last set of photos in 15 minutes time.
I've shot this location before but only with normal focal lengths (35mm & 50mm). I planned to focus on using a telephoto lens this time however to compress the background, effectively pulling the background to appear closer. I look forward to updating this post with the film photos shot at this location.
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