Elements

... or rather - The Mistress of the Copper Mountain.
4 of my photographer friends invited me for a small shoot with their model friends )
totally impromptu. The location was stunning! i had no idea that right by the Ring Freeway theres a HuGe white sand quarry with humongous slabs of rock piled up. Amazing. Add some stormy skies and you have a a very dramatic location.
The rest was easy - one strobe - camera left on a tall boom + Deep Octa from Elinchrom with the front removed.

Dozed off In Moscow

It took me more than a week to meet everyone I wanted to meet and to get started on my shooting routine here in Moscow. The weather is amazing and it looks like this summer is going to be promising. I need to renovate my old od apartment badly but for now I am staying with my parents which certainly makes both parties a little happier. Athough that old place is nothing short of a mess - it makes a pretty cool studio :) Super small location but quite spectacular when it comes to creative possibilities.
Two of my photo friends helped me to bring my new couch to the place and ended up staying until late. We decided to call up some amateur models and 3 girls showed up at 11 pm. Speaking of making the same thing possible in LA - No way in Hell you can get a model that you have never met on the same day esp. THAT late. Love love love Russian models. Professional. Ready to work!
Anyway - these are some model tests for Ogla (nude model) and Kate (dressed)

I will post more shots later but to make a long story short, I was trying out the location and some tricks with lights and quick concepts.

I wanted to create some images that woud speak to the viwer on multiple levels... depending of the audience's level of deapth pf perception I am hoping that everyone would see something that goes a little beyond the initial pic.

Escape the volcanic ash!! :))

Prototype?

boredom..............................
can't wait to get out of LA finally...
hate it here...

enjoy the product of having too little to sleep and too much time on hands.
I am waiting for the air to clear since that volcano has screwed up my travel plans delaying me here for weeks now...

Dry Lake Outing

i shamelessly stole this one from Connor lol






Lovely day!
Connor stopped by my place on Thursday and we sat there watching a friend watching cartoons and... decided that it was about damn time to get out to Victorville dry lakes.

I have always wanted to go there but since it is far I really didn't want to have to drive by myself and some hot model. Pretty understandable, right? :) So on Saturday we met our models (lovely Brunette and Blonde (Monica and Lyz) from Model Mayhem and went there. Lyz couldn't really shoot that day so we had her working with us for about 40 minutes. Not much but she was so amazing that I am having some hard time choosing the pics. Anyway... it was windy and so freakin' dry that I think i drank like half a gallon of water in an hour...

If you ever go there with lights also bring lots of sand bags. Shit will fly over since it is VERY windy. Also think about having to go to the bathroom in a place where it is absolutely NOWHERE to hide... I mean one can be seen popping a squat (learned that expression from the models!) a mile away! lol
good times!!

About the pics... Since I had no idea what clothes models will bring, i just kinda went with what they had and with Lyz we had something sci-fi inspired. "Lyz, think about landing onto Mars" one could hear me telling her lol Why do people think that I am a nerd? bitchez... :) Monica , on the other hand looked very sports illustrated and we got to work with her for some good 4 hours. Tons of great photos and they will be updated as I process them.

Lighting wise it was easy. One or two strobes, and that's about it... Really the location is just so awesome that natural light will work just fine. Hard natural light that is. There's virtually no golden hour. It's like a golden minute. Dry air doesn't give this amazing light that everyone likes, plus there was no clouds that would reflect and diffuse the harshness of the sun.

Hard light is a great tool when you are comfortable with it. Just avoid distracting shadows. It means that your model will be facing the sun a lot. Have her close her eyes and on count "3" ask her to open them. This is a little anti squinting trick that everyone knows in SoCal.

wow it s 3:17AM - gotta go to bed. Whole day of retouching tomorrow. yay...

Shoot with Deshawn

before i start - Connor - dude , you rock! The most fun I've had at at shoot in a long while! Thank you for the company and your help!

I don't think there's too much to write about here in terms of technical stuff - overpowering the sun with one Elinchrom Ranger and that's about it. The mixing and matching the colors was the fun part. This time it all fell into place somehow. I had an idea about the location, we did manage to buy some clothes (Scarf and pants courtesy of Ross lol.

i knew right away that working with Deshawn will be awesome. What a great model this guy is! He followed my every blink, every little tweak like a pro! It was almost impossible to communicate clearly because of the waterfall (a really small artificial waterfall on some plastic rocks, may I mention, but yet, very loud)

The goal of the shoot was to create 3. maybe four looks around the same concept. The initial concept was something scandalous and sexy and LaChapelle like. The clothes that we had begged to differ, so i just went ahead and changed it in my head real quick. You can't go wrong with dark skin and red colors. Add white and you have your royal combo of colors. always looks good!

I was pleased to see that the color photos got an extremely warm welcome on Euro phot forums. I was equally shocked by some of the responses in the 90 percent American forums, were people called the shots, gay, icky, vomit causing and so on... Albeit i heard it from the folks who primarily shoot high school seniors and pics of their dogs, but nonetheless i was quite displeased by the level of fucking ignorance.

a strange day

everything felt a tad strange today.
Yesterday I met a cool bunch of aspiring photographers from LA Talent Connection. IT was cold but the conversation was warm. I invited everyone from yesterday to do some modeling tests with me today. Some showed up, some left early but after getting kicked out of the Science Center (I HATE THOSE DAMN MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!! ok i'm done)
we went to a near by junkie hot spot, where I have shot tons of times and knew that no one is gonna be bothering us... I am way too tired to write a huge long write up but I realized one thing. A good photographer should be able to think on the spot. Right away. Even when the day is not going the way you planned. Even if the models are beginners. Doesn't matter. MAKE IT WORK. if it doesn't - it is your fault. If you are walking away without a decent shot - you gave up. Wow... i was so close to packing up early... huge head ache struck me in the middle of the shoot and i just felt like a roller coaster accident victim through the night... I must say - I am very happy with the pics today. I haven't shot fresh stuff like this in a while. I need to do this again. Just say FUCK YOU to the rules and shoot from your heart... like jazz... i love this feeling... Almost ZERO processing here. (color correction and sharpening. The halo is a combination of the light behind the head and a slight.
dodge tool cheat.

Contribute pictures if you were there . I'll post them for all to see :)

thank you guys for all your help - especially Kevin - dude, you are the freakin best