My first rock star shoot!

This past Sunday evening I had the great opportunity to photograph an up and coming female rock star.   For now she'll remain nameless :)

We spent two hours shooting and I ended up with over eighty photos in Lightroom that have at least one star!

While shooting, I accidentally messed up a few times with the shutter speed, going over 1/200 and getting the shutter blur in the shots.  But with one of them, I loved what effect it had on her face, so I tailored the rest of the photo to look the same way.  Here's the result:

I absolutely love this!  And I think she will too :)  I dodged out the zipper of the jacket, the close edge of the sunglasses, the top line of her shoulder and her neck.

Happy accidents are the best.

Breaking the rules of headshots

My lovely wife wanted some new headshots and asked if we could try to get some good photos.  I've recently been thinking about trying white on white or black on black portraits, even though that's sort of a cardinal sin.

With that in mind, I figure that rules were meant to be broken, as long as the result is worth it:

I used two softboxes as key lights, a 4x3 from above pointed down at an angle, and a 1x3 pointed up from below.  There was a strobe with an umbrella behind the white paper backdrop, with the light bouncing off the wall directly behind it, just like my Vogue Italia shot.

Shot on my 5d3 with an 85mm at f3.2, 1/40, and (I think) ISO 100.

What do you think?

Ready for some headshots?

I am!

:)

My version of the Vogue Italia shot

My wife is totally awesome and agreed to pose for me:

Trying to reproduce this shot was fun!  I quickly discovered that my Dynalite strobes are too powerful even turned down to quarter power, and that owning flags/gobos would be a good thing.

I used my black background again and tried to shoot a full-power strobe through it to make it grey, but I couldn't get it as even as the original shot.  In retrospect, maybe I could have used a white background and then just not lit it?  So, rather than try shooting through the black paper, I fired the strobe against the wall in the opposite direction to get some sweet edge lighting similar to a wine bottle shoot I did last year.  There's no edge lighting in the original shot but I really like it in mine :)

Adriana Lima in Vogue Italia

The full version of this photo was in the June 2014 issue of Vogue Italia.

I've cropped the photo because of the bare breast in the original; I don't want this blog flagged for nudity!

Anyways, I love this photo.  How can you lose when Adriana Lima is in front of your camera?  I don't know who shot this, but I wish I did!

It looks like a simple two-light shoot (one for Adriana and one for the background) and I'm going to try and talk my wife into posing in a recreation of this shot!  Wish me luck :)

Reproducing the Bvlgari sunglasses shoot

When I last posted, I was ruminating upon how the Bvlgari sunglasses photo below was done.  My lovely wife volunteered to pose for a few shots so that I could try and figure it out!  Here's my shot:

I used three lights: a narrow 3"x1" softbox for my main illumination, a regular 4"x3" softbox for fill, and a strobe shooting through the black background paper to make it appear grey.  Shot with an 85mm at f/5.6, 1/25 sec shutter, ISO 200.  This was a tough shot to try and reproduce because the original shot is mostly shadows with just a few bright areas.  I think the end result looks pretty decently close to the original.

There are some things that I'd do differently if I were to do the shoot again:

• Use a brighter key light and just underexpose a bit, so I can get a faster shutter speed.
• Rather than have the key softbox close to the model in an attempt to use the softbox itself as the flag, flag off the softbox.
• With a brighter light, I can use a smaller aperture so that her necklace will be in focus.

And yes, I know these sunglasses are the wrong brand ;)

Analysis: Bvlgari - Jessica Stam

I'd like to start out by posting the very first photo that I ever saw that I wish I shot:

This is Jessica Stam posing for Bvlgari in 2007.  I don't know who shot it.  When I saw this in Vogue for the first time I stopped turning pages and just looked at it and tried to take it all in.  For me, this photo is magic and has to be the best sunglasses ad I've ever seen.

Let's look at the superficial things first.  Jessica Stam is a beautiful girl, without a doubt, with a face perfectly suited for these sunglasses.  I love how they did her hair.  Her makeup is neutral and calculated to match the jewelry, I think.  She's posed exquisitely with her neck just so and her hands & arms making an interesting shape in the frame while still looking feminine.  The sunglasses are simply great, definitely evoking the seamless style that was popular in 2007.  I believe that the Bvlgari model number for these sunglasses is 6009.

I'm having a difficult time trying to understand how they lit her.  Could this really just be a single light partially flagged off to create the shadow on her face?  Or, looking at the reflections on the sunglasses, maybe there's a grid light illuminating her body and a strip softbox for her face and shoulder?

I need to find a model and try this out!

Welcome to Moda 500

And welcome to my creative process.  Things here should get interesting in the next 8 weeks or so :)