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