The other day on the way to lunch with an old time San Diego graphic designer friend of mine, a spontaneous creative idea popped into my mind. As we were passing the parking lot of the Undisputed Fitness and Training Center on 16th and K street in downtown San Diego, I noticed a wall which had been buffed out by a number of talented graffiti writers, was unobstructed by parked cars. This meant a perfect shooting environment for mural portraits. Enough space to get close to the art as well as ample space to back up to get the whole mural in the shot. Fortunately I had some camera gear in the car, so I quickly got my camera gear out and set up a light stand with a Canon 580EX II hot shoe flash attached to a Pocket Wizard (wireless flash trigger), and a ten pound (10lb) Boa weight bag at the base of the stand. By the way, if you're a photographer reading this post, I highly recommend Matthews Boa weight bags. They're a bit pricey, but worth every penny in the end. Also, many thanks to Tracy M. for helping me keep my ongoing interest in graffiti street art portraits alive.

Portrait of Tracy M. standing in front of a graffiti art mural located on the parking lot wall of the Undisputed Fitness Center, located on 16th and K street, in downtown San Diego, Southern California. I must give the San Diego, MDR graffiti writers crew (about 9) props for fresh way they painted the graffiti art on this wall.

It was just a coincidence that Tracy was wearing yellow capri pants that day, which complimented all the colors (orange, red, blue and black) used by this crew when they painted this wall.

When shooting mural portraits I like the energy of the photos I create to be like the art that was painted on the wall. Full of life and movement. Here you can see the off camera hot shoe flash freezing Tracy\'s hair in the light as she moves in front of the wall and camera.

Portrait of Tracy M. low to the ground with graffiti mural in the background. Normally this parking lot is full of parked cars, but for some reason that day there wasn\'t one car in the lot. This allowed me to moved around the light and my PoV to get all sorts of different shots.

While we were shooting portraits in front of this wall I noticed these steel bars mounted to the wall. I thought it might make for some unique perspectives of her and the mural. Fortunately Tracy was open to climbing up to get these cool worm\'s eye view shots of her hair in motion with the mural and blue sky in the background.

Tracy M. looking down at the camera as I shoot up the wall to get this down low (birds eye view) portrait of her and the wall. You can see a bit of colorful lens flare from some backlighting from the sunlight.

Graffiti art mural portrait of Tracy M. looking over her shoulder with her hands on the wall.

After the shoot I noticed I was dripping with perspiration. Working quickly on the blacktop, moving the weighted down light stand and the excitement of photographing in a public urban environment, really gets my blood pumping. Just another reason why I enjoy street photography. Unlike the luxury of working in a studio, where you can take your time to control the light and the pace of the shoot, working on the street, you have to work quick on your feet and you just never know what you're going to happen. Before I start shooting the model, I normally take a few test images to get the right exposure, then I shoot, shoot, shoot to keep the energy flowing... never looking back or down at the LCD to review. But when we were done with the shoot and I had time to review the shots, I was more than pleased with the results of our efforts. All images were created by Chris Keeney using a Canon EOS 5D with a 16mm ƒ/2.8 L series lens, two Pocket Wizard Plus II, Paramount sync cord, Matthews light stand with Boa weight bag (10 lb), Adobe Lightroom 2.0 and Photoshop CS3.

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