Headshots with Caley

I had the opportunity of doing some headshots for aspiring actress Caley this past month in the studio. I wanted to keep things fairly simple so I used two background setups, one white and one dark grey. Lighting was two lights on Caley primarily using a beauty dish with diffuser and a bare strobe for the hairlight. For the photo above there are two lights behind her left and right. I pointed the strobe on her right side towards the camera just enough to get a natural lens flare effect. For the two shots below I took one of the lights and used it against the background. In the case of the dark grey background I positioned the background light directly behind her head so that there would be a nice sort of halo effect.

For these last two shots I switched up the beauty dish and used a ring light. Notice the catchlights in her eyes.

Good luck Caley with your acting career!

Photo Shoot with guitarist Shane Carling

I had the pleasure this past weekend of photographing Shane Carling for his upcoming website and CD. This guy is really amazing and you must check out his performance of "Dust" on YouTube which he played for us live during the shoot. You can also find out more about Shane on his Facebook page. Shane was introduced to me by Pirabalini, a great stylist that I have worked with before and who was also the creative behind the outfits for this shoot. Rounding out the team was Kyla Charney who was in charge of makeup. We had such a fun time during the whole shoot and there was just such great chemistry with the team. Here's a small sample of the shots from that day. Only the one at the top of this blog was really edited in Photoshop. The rest below were pretty much as they were shot. I kept the lighting very simple but did mix a little bit of natural light along with flash. I shot most of these with a 50mm 1.4 wide open.

This shot above is one of my favourites because the depth of focus is so shallow. Notice how Shane's face and hands on the neck of the guitar are in focus but his shirt and vest are blurry.

Model Shoot - Clayton

On my last day of class at Vancouver Photo Workshops I did two separate shoots and the other model that I worked with that night was Clayton. He was styled by Amanda that evening. We did a similar edge lighting setup that I had used before and the look with the grey suit and sunglasses worked out well. Amanda brought along a very stylish long leather coat that had great texture to it and it worked really well with both the edge lighting and also the full white background shots as well. The third lighting setup we had was a pair of Kino Flo lights against a brushed metal background. Here are a few shots from that evening.

Later that same week we teamed up again for a location shoot this time. Amanda once again pulled some great outfits together for the shoot. We did the shoot in the early evening just as the sun was starting to go down in the sky a bit. I was really hoping for a day with fewer clouds but as it turned that day was partly overcast. For the lighting on these shots I used a small softbox and portable strobe triggered by Pocket Wizards. I did some minor colour balancing in post to give it a warmer look too. Clayton had been talking about trying to get signed with an agency. He mentioned that his agent really liked the stuff we had done together and soon after these photos were taken he was signed on by Next Canada and it even has one of the photos we did together on his portfolio page. Congrats Clayton! Here are some of the location shots.

Model Shoot - Carolina

The very last class of my course at Vancouver Photo Workshops wrapped up a few weeks ago. It was a great night and I shot two models that night. Our assignment was to put our own creative teams together and to plan things out. One of the shoots that night was with model Carolina. Working their magic behind the scenes was Lindsey for the wardrobe and styling and Ruhi was in charge of hair and makeup. The concept came from Lindsey who wanted to create a look inspired by the movie Before Coco Chanel. Carolina was a real joy to work with and her modelling experience really shows in how she struck her poses and her fierce expressions. We had some fun with a few jumping shots as well.

The other model that night was Clayton. Stay tuned for pictures from that shoot.

Model Shoot - Tony

This set of photos is from the second to last class of our course at Vancouver Photo Workshop. I gathered together the team of make up artist Diana, stylist Pirabalini and model Tony. This team had a lot of chemistry and I look forward to working with them again soon. Three separate lighting setups where used. One was done against a grey backdrop and consisted of two gridded strobes of to the left and right behind Tony and then a beauty dish above in front. The two back strobes were about one and half stops brighter so that gives that nice bright edge look. I included an out take that looks pretty cool as Tony totally stayed in character while Piraba and Diana touched him up.

The next was a just a pure white setup and I took multiple shots and composited the image above. Finally I did some shots with Tony using a pair of Kino Flo lights and angled them so that I was using the light falloff to light him. This gave it a bit more light and shadow to the look than just sandwiching him between them and blasting him with light.

Stay tuned for my next post of the last shoot from the VPW studios. Two models and two teams.

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.

Model Shoot - Brittany

I had the pleasure this past weekend to work with Brittany and also makeup artist Jazmin. Both of them were very professional and fun to work with. I had originally thought about an outdoor shoot but because of the forecast for rain on our shoot day we opted for the studio instead but as luck would have it the better part of the day was actually really sunny. Fortunately though the studio has these huge windows at one end that lets in some amazing natural light when the sun is in the right place. I've been wanting to challenge myself a bit more and leave the safety of the studio and start doing more location lighting and mixing strobes with natural light and ambient light. For part of this session I tried some shots next to the windows and mixed in some fill flash just enough to blend with the natural light but to also get those catch lights in the eyes.