I’ve seen these arcade portraits for years. In arcades. With neon lights everywhere. And just an overall fun and creative vibe.

And I’ve wanted to do a shoot like for equally as long!!

Well how come I never have?

A few reasons:

Sometimes I’m guilty a situation where I think I should wait for someone to come to me with the idea.
Sometimes I struggle with “staying in my lane” and feel like an imposter when I experiment too far outside of weddings and couples
Sometimes I get in my own head and think if I reach out to people to shoot, they’ll laugh at me and not take me serious.

Unfortunately, none of those mindsets got me any closer to experimenting with these neon portraits.

So what did I do?

I pulled my head out of my aperture, and I reached out to a photographer friend Brianna, and let her know I wanted to shoot some experimental portraits. Something that would be a creative risk. Simply because I’d never tried to shoot in an arcade, I wasn’t sure if we’d even get anything.

Much to my surprise, she already had been wanting to do a shoot like that.

I’m glad that I reached out!

And, can I just say: WE HAD SO MUCH FUN…

Tinkering with lighting, perspective, filters, etc.

I challenged myself to use one lens: 24-70 2.8. Threw a 1/4 black mist filter, and brought a little magnetic light to mount and light her face.

It was about an hour of just experimenting, taking 7-8 EH snapshots… joking and laughing at us trying to be cool…and then finding THE SHOT. Over and over again!

Here’s 7 edits from the gallery! Quite a bit more to go through.

Takeaway

If there’s something you want to try in photography…

*Build a vision, find a person, and SHOOT YOUR SHOT.*

I struggle with reaching out to people to shoot, too…. But you have to make these shoots happen if you want these shoots to happen.

Keep practicing. And I hope you love these portraits.

Gear breakdown:

Body: Canon R6 II

Lens: 24-70 2.8L II

Filter: NEEWER 82mm Black Mist 1/4

Light: Neewer TL96RGB

Edited in Lightroom Classic

Settings variance:

1/100, f/2.8 ISO 1600 - ISO 4000

1/40, f/2.8, ISO 320

1/20, f/2.8, ISO 2000

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