One of my favorite outfits to photograph a client is what I call “flying dresses.” The type of dresses I have are wrap dresses with really long trains. I have this dress in five different colors: blue, red, black, purple, and yellow. I tried to get the dresses in a few different sizes because I wanted to make sure I was being inclusive for different-shaped women. (Check out this blog post I did of another flying dress session.)

I was inspired to create this shoot because it was for National Black Female Photographers’ Day. It is a day where Black female photographers get together and just create some awesome photographers together. I decided to share my love of these dresses with some of the local photographers in my area. We grabbed two amazing models and headed to Coronado, CA to have this session.

Flying Dresses Photo Shoot

We met up early on Saturday, September 11th so that we could avoid traffic and finish our shoot before too many people were out and about. One of my photographer friends, Justeen, hipped me to a very cool spot in Coronado that had a great view of the San Diego skyline. We worked with Kenyatta and Monet for this session.

This is one of my favorite shots of Kenyatta. I had key light (aka main light source) to the left of Kenyatta. It is pointed at her face so that she can be more evenly lit. The sun is behind Kenyatta illuminating her dress. Without the light source to the left of Kenyatta, her face and front of the dress would be much darker than the rest of the dress. Justeen helped me achieve this look by tossing the dress behind Kenyatta to give the flying look.

I absolutely love this image of Monet. The lighting setup is the same for Monet as it was Kenyatta’s photo above. I’m so glad that I brought my light to this photoshoot so balance out the sun. This shot was a little more difficult to achieve because Justeen had stepped away so I had to make the dress flow on my own. To create this shot, I had to take the dress in my right hand and toss it. I am really happy with how this shot came out.

This was such a fun photo shoot and I can’t wait to do another one!