Alexandria Huff
Alex takes dramatic, timeless portraits with a painterly aesthetic.
She learned about lighting and teaching while modeling for photographers such as Joe McNally and has since gone on to teach lighting workshops of her own in San Francisco. Before getting into portraiture, she shot motorsports for X-Games, World Rally Cross, and Formula Drift.
After spending years in San Francisco working out of shared studio in an art collective doing corporate headshots and teaching lighting workshops, she longed to use her personal style on portraits of family and childhood friends and now lives near her hometown in Oregon where she also helps run an experimental DJ collective.
Though she has experience in a variety of shooting styles, the chiaroscuro aesthetic is Alex’s favorite. Painters make up the bulk of her online following and they often use her portraits as reference pieces for their own works.
Alex also has a passion for the history of cemeteries and runs a photo blog of various cemeteries and graveyards from around the world.
With work published in both the French and German versions of Digital Photo Magazine as well as niche periodicals such as Colored Pencil Magazine, Alex bridges the gap between photographers and fine artists and encourages symbiotic relationships between all art forms. Explore Alex’s photographer tutorials here on the BL Blog as well as on 500px and SmugMug. Alex currently works in product and merchandising for BorrowLenses.
Alex's Work and Equipment: In Her Own Words
I shoot primarily on a D800 or D850 and with either a Sigma 50mm Art, Nikon 58mm f/1.4 (which, in my opinion, is Nikon’s greatest lens), or a 24-70mm. For lighting, I use a Profoto B2 but I am eager to try out the A2. I love Profoto’s deep, white-interior umbrellas but for travel I use the Profoto RFi 3′ octa.
Scarves are an important part of my art. From Amman, Jordan to Goodwill in Portland, my scarves are acquired from all over. My mother was a collector, so I had, what you could say, was a head start!
There isn’t a lot of smiling in my work. I direct clients to have expressions and poses that are traditional, even somber. This is a nod to timeless portraits of the past.
I almost always use just 1 light and a reflector for fill. Sometimes I mix ambient and strobe lighting and use my hand-painted backgrounds as a departure from my typical low-key style.
