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Sunday, November 29, 2009

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.

Friday, November 27, 2009

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.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

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:

Saturday, November 21, 2009

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

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

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 

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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!! 


Friday, November 13, 2009

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.

Monday, November 2, 2009