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 - 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.

Model Shoot - Tasha

As promised here are some photos from a shoot I did a few weeks ago with Tasha. Hair and makeup were done by Cerise. For this shoot I used the ring light extensively. One thing I found was that it worked great in really tight spaces. For the one picture below of Tasha sitting on the old school cash register, that was done in a space that was literally no bigger than what you see in the frame. There is probably only half a foot on either side until it meets the walls. So where you might not be able to fit a soft box or even a small shoot through umbrella without blocking your shooting angles you can use a ring light quite effectively. For the shot above I purposely left an edge of the ring light visible so you can see what shooting with a 10mm wide angle lens does and how much light coverage you can actually get from just one ring flash. The ring light look is very popular these days in magazines and it has its place. I still enjoy being creative with lighting though and the challenge of blending shadows and light to create a certain mood and ambiance in a shot is going to be around long after the fad of the ring light fades away.

Photo Submission makes it into the Georgia Straight paper

The Georgia Straight is a local lifestyle and entertainment publication that covers the greater Vancouver area. They run a photo every week from contributors and I always took notice of these whenever I flipped through the weekly issues. A while back I submitted a series of photos and didn't think much of it. Last week I received an email from them that simply said "nice shots Bernard" and thank you very much. I thought it was just a standard way of acknowledgement by them that they had viewed my photos. So today I was at the gym and at the end of my workout I thought to myself, I wonder if they would ever run my photo. They happen to keep a stack of The Straight at the gym and today being Thursday, which is the day a new weekly issue comes out, I decide to flip through it. To my amazement there on the contents page was my photo. That totally made my day!

I think I just might start submitting more of my work to other publications, who knows.

Model Shoot - Jillian

Last weekend I had the pleasure of working with agency model Jillian on this shoot. The hair and makeup was by Cerise. I have been wanting to try some different lighting techniques and one that I've been very curious about was using a ring light. A ring light offers a very unique look. It casts a very even illumination and the shadows it creates are like an even halo around the subject. There is also the characteristic catch light in the eyes. You see this look a lot in print ad and magazines like Maxim. I purchased an Orbis Ring Flash a few weeks ago and this shoot was my first chance to try it out. It's not a true ring flash in the sense that it doesn't have a flash bulb in it but instead you insert your off camera flashes into it and then trigger it either with an attached cord or wireless trigger. I actually attached my flash to a tripod for these shots and then put the Orbis Ring Flash on over top of it and shot through the center of ring flash. Overall I am very pleased with the results. Sure it's not going to give me the same quality of light that a professional Profoto ring light would but it's portable and costs way less. You'll notice in the photos below the catch lights in her eyes are ring shaped. For the photos against the wall she is standing about six inches away from it and notice the perfectly silhouetted shadow and how it outlines her body.

The next post will be with model Tasha and her shoot that was also done with the ring light. Stay tuned!

A-Maze-Ing Laughter - Vancouver Biennale

At the corner of Davie and Denman Street in downtown Vancouver sits another set of statues that are part of the Vancouver Biennale and this one is entitled "A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER" by artist Yue Minjun from China. It is comprised of 14 very large bronze statues each of which is over ten feet tall and bares the very recognizable face of the artist in various states of laughter. This art exhibits attracts tons of visitors, each trying to mimic the poses and gestures of Yue's creation while their friends take pictures of them. The first time I saw this exhibit was a few months ago on a dark rainy night and without any lights to illuminate the statues it actually looked pretty scary. Now there is a big spotlight that shines on it during the evening.

To capture the texture and colour of the statues I tried using HDR processing but actually I prefer using a combination of Photoshop and Lightroom to get a similar look. Only the first picture in this series below was actually made using Photomatix. The rest were done through a combination of filters and adjustments and the last two were converted to black and white in Lightroom.

Model Shoot - Tracy

I had the opportunity of working with model Tracy two weeks ago on this shoot. The inspiration from it came from Tracy to make her into a bit of a quirky Clockwork Orange type of character. We enlisted the help of make up artist Andie and hair stylist Ana Luisa to make this transformation take place. Tracy said that she never thought that she would be good at glamour and fashion but I beg to differ. The whole team did an incredible job and we all had lots of fun. Ana Luisa had put on some crazy hair extensions on Tracy and I am a big into backlighting hair or at least using a hair light for separation of the subject from the background. I tried a bare bulb flash behind Tracy but eventually found a pink gel that really made the shot more interesting and really enhances the look for the last two shots.