As the summer wanes here on the prairie, children head back to school and the Illinois county fairs have come and gone. Newly crowned fair queens now turn their attention to preparing for the Illinois state pageant.

Lincoln resident Crystal Quint will represent Logan County this January in Springfield. The pageant requires participants to submit two photographs with their applications, and Crystal was in the studio recently to have those pictures made.

The behind-the-scenes time-lapse video above (click here if it didn't load) shows Crystal's session, some of her thoughts on the day, and a few of the finished images. As you should see (though maybe it's hard to tell given the speed of the video), the session was very relaxed. We photographed Crystal in three different outfits over a 90-ish-minute period or so.  Lots of time and an easy pace is a good way to make pictures.

I'll have some of Crystal's photos from the session available in a post soon. For now, enjoy the video. 

Special thanks to Crystal for a terrific session, pageant co-directors Deanne Mott and Amy Cherry for their hard work and professionalism, and Crystal's mom Pattie for being a great "pageant mom." It's a joy to work with all of you.

A few notes on gear. I'm still using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens as my main portrait rig. The main light is a Paul Buff Einstein in a 60" Photek Softlighter II, and the seamless background paper was light with an Einstein and an Alien Bee B800. The video snippets with Crystal were recorded with the Panasonic GH3 and Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 lens (a great combination) with a Rode VideoMic Pro mounted on the camera. The studio footage was recorded with a GoPro Hero 3 Black affixed to a superclamp on the wall.

If you're in central Illinois (Springfield, Bloomington/Normal, Decatur, Peoria, Champaign/Urbana) and interested in learning about how I approach business and pageant portraits (AKA, headshots) in the studio, you'll find descriptions, videos, and testimonials on the Business Portraits page.