Thursday, April 29, 2010

Model Shoot - Melanie


I had the pleasure of working with Melanie last week at the VPW class. Melanie is not only a fantastic model but also a very talented photographer as well and owns her own creative photography business called Sugar Creative. She also has one of the most symmetrically perfect faces I have seen in a long time. That evening she was sporting a hairstyle will low bangs across the front so that accentuated the symmetry even more. Here are a number of shots from that shoot. The first three images were shot in a setup of two diffused Kino Flo lights directly in front of her to camera left and right and then one overhead. You'll notice the vertical catchlights in her eyes. They were originally shot on a bright pink background but I decided to work on my Photoshop skills and composited her on different backgrounds plus worked on desaturating the colour as well. The last three images were shot with two lights. One strobe was overhead and diffused while the second light was around knee level and provided just enough fill to eliminate shadows from the top light. A little help from my fellow classmates for providing just enough "wind" for the hair effect. Thanks guys.


Stay tuned for more photo shoots coming up soon. We are down to our last two classes at VPW and it's time for the students to bring in models and their entire creative team to pull off shoots. I'm planning on shooting two different male models to add to my portfolio which is really needing some more guys represented. Don't worry, there will be some ladies too.


Monday, April 19, 2010

Model Shoot - Cecilia

I've been taking a Creative Lighting for Fashion and Editorial course at Vancouver Photo Workshop and we had the chance to work with model Cecilia and stylist Candice last week. Nothing too fancy for this particular set of photos. Just one very big softbox! In fact it was the biggest one I've used and was really made up of two 8 foot tall foam core dividers forming a box with an open side that was covered by two bedsheets. Inside of this was a Profoto head that was triggered at full power. The box was placed at camera left and lit the model from her right side and with the fall off alone it cast a really even wrapping light as you can see from the photos. All that was needed to bring out a bit of detail on her left side was to use a big fill card or reflector. Nothing beats a big light source for soft light. Some really minor skin retouching and Lightroom tweaks otherwise this is as shot.