Happy new year!

:) :) :) :) :)

Nastya and Kat.

When MUA is tired

Nina Just is one of the craziest MUA's I've seen! Super funny gal! She was very tired after a lengthy make up session where she had to put make up on 5 models using elaborate snow imitations, liquids and body paints. I asked her to pose for just 10 minutes and these shots I guess were the most suitable to her mood that day. Anyway, make sure your MUS is rested and fed. :)

Underwear Ad

Alex contacted me for some underwear ad style image and told me that they had to be slightly "editorial". He is trying to make it in the fashion biz and I was glad to help him out.

The light was dramatic and the Quadra worked like a champ! The deep octa never seizes to amaze me as well. what a great versatile tool! Gosh, I need to be backed by Elinchrom! Help me Frank! :)

Maxim Magazine

Or so I wish... ;)

I 've told myself many times that stuff that one sees in MAim magazine (american version where there's no nudity), is not really worthy of exploring as it desn' have any soul nor it has any artistic value. However during this shoot with Masha, a pro Russian model from Moscow, I realized how important to at least pretend that you are shooting for a famous publication. It has to be done professionaly, it has to be clean, you have to forget your lack of experience and just go with the flow.

The shoot lasted barely an hour, and we knocked out around 90 frames which is a very small number at least for me. The reason for such a short hoot was the weather outside the studio (-25F)

and therefore the heaters inside the large studio facility couldn't keep up with the cold. Masha was fully dressed for the light check, poses, etc and then we asked her to start posing for real, barely dressed. She was a trooper and just a very nice person, who never complained, whined or asked for anything (pro models are not just pro model looks)

below are the 2 shots we kept.

Fury!!

I am currently visiting my family in Russia and boy is it cold here!!
We had a fashion editorial shoot of G. Skandal's new collection "Aliens" and it reminded me of the band called Rammstein. As you all may guess their music was playing VERY loudly during this rather tough shoot.

Lots of takes, lots of coffee and brandy, since it ws -30C outside and this huge facility is tough to heat up.

3 lights were used.

Stripbox with a red gel

Stripbox in the front

Small softbox for the BG.

hairspray and lighters for the fire.

Red gels for some reason gave a blurry effect and I have to look into that.

Also the Hensel Pro lights are prety darn slow in the recycle department so the shoot went like this -

click - tell a joke. click - cry a little. click - remember a curse word... yeah. fun but not really to much of it. I wish I had a profoto with its 10 clicks p/s. :)

Klara - my new favorite model

Klara is from Otto Models. Wanted something she didn't have in her book yet. I hope she likes... 
One freakin' amazing model!! She is also a photographer so she knows what's going on in my poor head during a shoot. 

I love Dockweoler Beach and I've been wanting to shoot there for a while now. The only problem is that the airplanes there are so loud that by the end of the day you lose your voice trying to screwm the directions to the model... lol. I resorted to communicating in a more of a straght forward way (last pic) :)

Klara came back to our house and she as so cold that beach shoot that a nice hot tub was a must. Good thing we didn't pack the lights and the cameras away yet, so here's one from the set. It is just one (out of 50) that I had the time to retouch and retouching was the hardest part here, since fair skinned people tend to get very red and blotchy while sitting in a 130 degree water... one tough retouch, and no you can't see the before.

Marla's Perfect Night

Marla (band name MARLA)is a London and LA based musician/singer/composer/and now, with tons of confidence I will add "model" to the long list of her talents. While last night was not her first time in front of a camera, she absolutely blew me away with her artistic and expressive personality. It was so easy to work with her! Just set up and go! And she really went! Multititude of looks, sparkling personality left me with 500 shots with a 70% keeper rate. Really... what else a guy with a camera can wish for?!

These photos will probably be used to promote her next album which you will most likely hear about pretty soon.  My favorite song on there is Betty the Raver is still playing in my head! 

Lighting wise it was all very different but the ranger rx and the quadra were the saviors! There's also a natural light set.

Oumar Test Shoot

Oumar is an amazing dancer and is not a bad model!
Today it was a go-see shoot, meaning that I've seen this model for the first time today and had a test shoot, just to learn their goods and bads. 
To tell the truth, Oumar has lots of work to do in terms of learning how to pose, but his incredible physique compensates for the lack of modeling skills. I will be using him for my personal and perhaps 
for commercial projects. Good day, but tiring, since I ended up consentrating on posing the model instead of shooting.
no oils were used, as he was quite shiny already it was hard not to overexpose the highlights
as for the lighting, we went a little extreme, removing all the baffles from the deep octa giving the guy very contrast shadows with very short fall off, where they were made even more contrasty by adding the kicker light.

Operation Cooperation

Wow, Sunday was a blast! My new photo friend Kurt came in with some Alienbees to shoot with models Nick and Andre. Kurt is a great guy and if you need a good deal on a monitor he is your guy (inside joke, sorry)

Andre who is a professional actor and dancer and I ended up working together for pretty much all day  and I have never worked with a model so creative and animate! Andre had all these amazing ideas, and I will tell you that for the first time ever I felt what it is like to work with a MODEL. No puppetier tricks, just hang in there and hope you are good enough to capture what this guy does. 

At the end of the shooting day Kurt and I decided to come up with a quick lighting concept and the toughest part was to take our harsh Californian high noon (2pm) sun into consideration. Under good circumstances it actually makes a pretty good rim light at f16 ;) 

anyway, look at the pics and see for yourself:

Adriana

oday was Adriana's very first photoshoot and it was a "go-see" shoot with me as I am currently looking for models I can work with on a regular basis for various projects. Also, by the way, I am looking for some creative shutterbugs there, to pull together a small team for some greative togetherness... so if you are interested, dear SoCal peoples, holla. 
Anyway, we shot at 2 locations and these are the shots that we liked (we have 50 keepers overall but I don't have the editing prowess for that) 
It was miserably cold at the beach and we decided not to pretend and shoot a cool (cold) image. She is cold and she looks cold, hense the static pose. Small Quadra at the lowerst setting on a boom. bare

the second shot was a lot more complex. 
Ranger with Deep Octa - camera left and 9 feet up
Quadra is fill 
The sun happened to give off some orange pretty early in the day so we have some orange rim here. 

Adriana has tons to learn in terms of posing but her amazing personality and natural soft looks made it happen tonight. Overall I am pretty happy and as always, feel free to bash, praise, say hi or send me cookies. All of these will greatly improve my quality of life

Like a Marlboro Ad

had a fun shoot with a model looking to update her folio. There will be more but I edited just one so far.

Lessons learned 

- don't let models venture away and talk to their friends on the phone while we are losing light. 
- Be straight with them and tell them what looks good and especially what looks bad. They will give more shots this way. 
-Ranger Deep octa is great, but I need a larger light mod. Suggestions? (Elinchrom, Profoto, Chimera only pls) 

This is a simple shot and i used the big ranger and the Sun.

Fashionably lost

This is the same Amalia model but the location is different, as well as pretty much the entire setup. I can't even say it was the same shoot. Same day, yes, but the rest... 
let me just say that this was the most challenging location and the shoot I have ever done to date. 
The place was really difficult to get to, being very deceiving how close it was. I sctatched the hell out of myself, while bringing the gear down into the dry creek bed. 
The model was almost in tears, trying to stand up in high heels, which we decided to remove from the set entirely, after 30 minutes of struggle. 
Technically this was the set of dragging the shutter and making sure the model is frozen in the time continuum. Lots of blurry shots in the beginning and about 20 minutes to find the right balance between the holy trinity of ISO, f stops and shuter speeds. I swear it reminded me of mixing a cocktail for some reason! We all needed a drink after this set. 
I am pretty happy with the results, considering the circumstances. My wife was a great support, being an awesome MUA, model's support hotline and a voice activated lightstand! Love her to pieces! 
Anyway, just one shot, sorry. More to come if I feel like it 

Cool Waters

Nick called me today, as I was walking my dogs, and asked for some portfolio headshots and a portrait or two just himself. Totally unprepared I said yes, since it was either a couple of hours of shooting or a couple of hours being bored. We have a heated pool at our apartment complex and decided to try something with water at the same time knocking out some natural light shots. Little did we know that our little model will be pushing himself almost to hypothermia THAT's dedication. 

The light was pretty challenging since the pool is oddly shaped and we ended up with the deel octa to camera left and a bare Quadra all the way 40 feet away on the opposite side. I was very pleased at the performance of that little thingy, since it was working at full power while still managing to recycle at a pretty decent rate. Not as fast as the RX Speed though. 

Nick is not a professional model and today was more of an extreme cold practice run for him. That heated pool is still 20 degrees cooler than I'd like it too be. Gotta go talk to the manager :)

Overall today pretty much was fun, since this is my first water shoot. I will absolutely return to our beloved pool and they say that the hot tub is gonan be fixed really soon :) cant wait!! 

Mrs King

my wife is very supportive even when I ask her to stay still for a minute (which is a huge accomplishment for her ) 
These are the samples from a quick test shoot we did right outside our windows on the bench. I tested my new Elinchrom Quadra and my wife tested her new hairdo 

no makeup and very little editing. the top one is warmer since I played with color balance a tad. She liked the cooler one better and that's why i am posting both. 

main - EL ranger with deep octa
hair rim - EL RQ w/small kit reflector behind a leafy branch (natural cookie)

the rest in the exif as always.

Foggy Due

Souls of LA

yet another street photo outing. There's always something magical about captureing raw emotions and just everyday life.
I encourage everyone who is passionate about photography and especially about people photography to go out and try this. 
Play some music in your headphones and just watch. Don't forget to click. 
You have only one shot to make it happen. I am not sure if I "made it happen" for the viewers, but consider this a neverending exercise in photography. 

What I really liked about today is the light. Very harsh because of the super low humidity especially good for high contrast images, so this is what I was going for. Hard light is not always a bad thing, contrary to popular belief. 

These photos were taken at the annual Taste of Soul event in LA, CA.