20150827.George.Athletic

George asked me if i'd take some athletic shots for him. i've never shot athletic shots before aside from a few jogging shots here and there for catalog work and some skateboarding shots, but as for studio shots, nope, not once. what i know is athletic shots are usually shot high contrast hard light, so that's what i did. i think they turned out pretty good. George is happy with them, so that's what really counts.

was difficult to get the appearance of running. it took quite a few shots on my end, but we got the shots we were looking for. i also learned that when taking a shot with the model taking a drink, make sure the name brand and logo aren't showing. far too much editing on that shot just to remove the logo and brand which could have easily been avoided with a little more planning. we had no stylist for these shots. turned out fun, and i look forward to trying some more in the future.

these are all taken with Profoto B1 lights. most are taken with a zoom reflector, one on each side, and a couple are taken with a Magnum reflector. as always, all images are edited with Photoshop and NIK. 

20150615.Katie.MorphSuit

so tonight i tested with my friend Katie. she's modeled for me a few times, but tonight, we shot her in a morphsuit. i intended to use these as part of my Action! series, but these turned out better in odd poses which are intensified by the morphsuit itself. there's a creepiness to these photos i really like.

we did shoot some Action! style shots, and i'll process them later. for now, i'm quite pleased with the eeriness of these yoga contortion style poses. there's something very animalistic about these which i like.

these are shot with 3 profoto B1 lights using the high speed sync. obviously these shots didn't require high speed sync. since i was already set up for it, i shot them with a very fast shutter. i have a magnum on the key light, and two 3' strip boxes on the background. everything's processed with capture1, photoshop and NIK.

20150513.Light.Test.Joan-Elise Del Santo

a month or two ago, reading a fashion photographer's blog, he said one of his favorite lighting setups for fashion is five lights directly in front of the model, on the ground and pointing straight into the background (not at the model). of course, this is a composite of 5 shots. it's always fun to shoot with Joanie. i think this was the first time i've shot with her in over a year.

i DO like the lighting on Joanie, but it would be difficult to take a bad photo of her. what i learned from this setup is that the lights can't be sitting on the floor. the test shots i did with the lights resting on the floor looked too "campfire", so i raised them to the height of an apple box. for these five shots, all five lights are sitting on apple boxes. i also learned that i need to pull the model farther away from the background to spread the shadows more. these shots, despite liking the light on the model, the shadows on the background seem to make Joanie appear to be shaking due to the shadows being a bit too close together.

lighting wise, we have five profoto acute heads all with the same amount of power to each, all at the same distance from the model, all equally distanced from each other and all the height of an apple box off the floor.

20150425.ArmagosaOperaHouse

saturday, my friend carissa and i visited the armagosa opera house which is between death valley, ca and las vegas, nv. we found this pearl on our way to death valley two weeks before and both decided we needed to check out the opera house in the ghost town.

it was, as i expected, romantically creepy. it was everything i thought it would be. it was completely ominous and beautiful. the fact that this place is not only there but still operating is surreal, and surreal is the best word i can find for it. it's a juxtaposition. it's a contradiction. it's gorgeous. it's unreal that it exists as it does.

the "town", armagosa junction, was originally owned by the borax company which operated from nearby. when they stopped mining for borax, the town was abandoned. there is a hotel and gift shop operating in conjunction with the opera house. one of my favorite finds, along with a small cat i found painted in one of the mural's corners, was a tiny skull in the gift shop. it was not for sale. it was merely there for decoration.

this place exemplified noir which is why i processed a few of the photos as i did, dark and grainy like an old nosferatu movie, and while there, at any moment, i felt someone could enter the building a murder us all, not in a scary way, but in a romantic way, as if the opera house required the sacrifice to stay alive. 

all the walls and ceilings are painted with wonderful murals depicting an old english theater's seating. along the top rows were the dignitaries. the middle would be the wealthy business owners and the bottom row of paintings are performers. we, in the seats on the floor, are in the cheap seats. my favorite is the mural of a man handing a rose down to his love. the entire thing is as whimsical as it is serious as it is horrifying.

here's the the armagosa opera house! not many things can surprise, but it did! CHEERS!

20150412.Death.Valley.California

yesterday, i took a quick road trip with my friend carissa to death valley. i've been wanting to go there since i moved here. no idea why it took so long. it was pretty interesting. the sites we made it to were: scotty's castle, the sand dunes, artist's drive, ubehebe crater, badwater basin and zabriski point.

there was one more point of interest i wanted to see, but we ran out of time. i wanted to see the sailing rocks/racetrack. i've seen some images online before, and have wanted to see it. i will have to go back and check that out.

the most impressive thing for me was the volcano. it was enormous. the photograph doesn't do the size justice. i was shooting at 24mm, and i couldn't fit it all in. the drop was enormous. my fear of heights kept me from walking to the edge and looking in. my friend carissa kept telling me that it was a slope and not a drop. it didn't matter. once i noticed the size by looking at the other side, i couldn't even walk halfway from the car to the edge. the black landscape surrounding the volcano was quite eerie. it felt alien. a scifi movie about another planet could easily be filmed there.

while checking out scotty's castle, i spotted a fire hydrant which instantly reminded me of the movie "beavis and butthead do america". they're lost in the desert and dying of thirst. beavis says, "this desert is stupid. they need to put in a drinking fountain."

as we were leaving the park, we stopped at a site we spotted on the way in. it's not technically part of death valley, but it was still an amazing point of interest, the amargosa opera house. after wandering around the area a bit and stepping into the hotel's gift shop, we both came to the conclusion we'd go back for an opera soon. it was a little creepy, but that made it more interesting to me.

everything here is shot with a canon 6d and processed with photoshop and NIK.

20180321.Gar-Ye.Action!

Saturday morning, I shot with my friend Gar-Ye Lee for the Action! series I've been working. This series is still one of my favorite to shoot. It's always fun, and the folks I'm working with love doing it which makes it even more fun to shoot. I've known Gar-Ye for a few years, and she's super energetic to start with. She's a wonderful actress, so getting her picture taken and being in the light isn't new to her! Gar-Ye's also a really good stylist, and we're planning a few shoots together for the future. Looking forward to those!

The previous times I've shot these, each person has taken about 20-30 minutes. It's always a quick shoot. With Gar-Ye, we shot for over an hour and a half. At most, I've been getting two sets out of each shoot. I processed 10 sets with her since we shot so many variations of the outfit (hair down, hair up, jacket on, jacket off, suspenders on, suspenders off and so forth).

On this blog, these are processed relatively small (as with the previous sets). These are actually anywhere from 2' to 3' long and maybe 2' tall.

These are shot with Profoto B1 lights (two on the background and one on the model). The background lights have the zoom modifier, and the one on the model has a Magnum. Post is all handled with Photoshop and NIK.