Soft light on Jade for Veridis Clothier

I have been shooting for a male fashion client and for one of the shoots we hired a female model (who do you think is going to buy those shirts for him anyway? Right?). Enters Jade, who was super great to work with. My stylist Tiffany and I borrowed clothes from a local store, the excellent 'Veridis Clothier', an independent fashion store in Seattle. The location of this image is a great garage in Capitol Hill. Wood floors, large windows, completely empty but a free giant prop in the form of a vintage Ford truck? Perfect. Shot with a Canon speedlite mounted on a Softlighter at camera right. The image is a superposition of a colored layer and one closer to the original to preserve skin and clothes colors.

The Road: Outdoor shooting with the Softlighter

This shot is part of a small set of test images I have done using fashion from UK brand AllSaints. True to to their gritty/steampunk look I picked a Winter outdoor location on a nature reserve. The subject is designer Ian Obermuller, band member of Snowmanplan and creator of amazing animations. The dreary winter light we often have in the NorthWest made it easy to mix natural light with my flash. It was cold and windy and too keep things easy for my freezing assistant (hello Miss Van!) we shot with a simple, but trusted set up: Canon 580x II mounted inside a boomed Softlighter II with a gold insert. The flash fired at half power. ISO 100, 50mm, f4.5 1/200th sec. That gave me the cinematic look that I was looking for. What is our hero looking at?

The shot was then burned and dodged to bring out all the details of the scene in Photoshop 5. The color palette was created in Lightroom. To emphasize the dreary, post apocaliptic, 'this can't be good' look I emphasized the browns, greens and magentas.

You can see the full set on my website. The image has been picked by the fancy blog run by design pundit Chloe Scheffe.

Apples with apples

"Interesting Advertising" is the topic of this image and I have been a big fan of the iPad to show my work to clients. It is a big game changer in a small package. The image tried to translate that into a surreal setting (a downtown P-patch with the models wearing vintage dresses).

A quick run to the grocery store provided several pounds of apples...
Rachel and Lucianne were the models! Ari was my assistant. Jewelry from Rent the Runway.

Retouching: Janko Williams

Stranded!

Models: Ian, Chelsey, Chloe.

Stylist: Tiffany Parente Connors & Elizabeth Lodowski

MUA & Hair: Tiffany Parente Connors

Props: PJ Hummel and Sabine Foster.

"Stranded", a nod to "Paper Moon" and perhaps to some old Fellini movies took a couple of months of planning (props, vintage clothing, a few items from Anthropologie) but only 45 minutes to shoot. We were on our way to Odessa, WA when I stumbled onto the perfect location. It was getting dark and we "got the image" just before a rain shower poured on the set. A quick affair. Thanks to Laurie Clark and Danny Connors for assisting! Usual lighting scheme: large diffused softbox, next to camera, smaller strobe on Softlighter at camera left.

Of Wabi Sabi, film and The Five Obstructions.

Sunny Facer, my gloriously talented photo friend and I have challenged
each other to a photo duel. We are not as crazy as Lars Von Trier (a movie director who likes to inflict crazy projects on his willing subjects)..but close.

We had to take each other portrait in our own favorite style. The
subject got to choose the location. Sunny picked her almost empty
apartment (she is moving). I shot these two portraits with a very
simple set up: window light, a bit of fill from a speedlite mounted
inside a large softliter and some white sheets. The fun part was in
the editing where I get to play with Lightroom and Photoshop to get
that "old look" that I like.

Which comes to the second part of this post. Film? No thanks. Why?
It might seem contradictory as my photography often has a vintage/film/old camera/cheap lens look.

Mostly because I find film never gives me the amount of control on how
exactly 'imperfect' my images should look. Let's call it Wabi Sabi, which is an old concept in art. Yes often a bit of softness, vignetting, is exactly what the doctor ordered for an image,
but it should not be an excuse for sloppy images or for being passive in the creative process. Oh there I said it.

However, these days I have been playing a lot with my iPhone and some cool apps as "Camera Bag" (which simulates a number of specific film
looks) and "Plastic Bullet" (which adds some crazy artificial light leaks and coloring to your images). I would argue that it is art with creative control.

But that is for my next post.

The Lumberjack and the Ballerina

This is one more image from the Port Townsend trip. It features Chance, Kristin and the mysterious magical box. This image was shot in bright sunlight using two Alien Bees packs, their large parabolic umbrella and a softliter. It took..well about 8 minutes, but a lot more in planning the setting costumes and props (the box and the crazy paper flowers..and axe). I like the old Diorama effect, which comes mostly from shooting with strobes and daylight, and some photoshop adjusting with curves and local contrast. Many people asked me if any subject/item/rock/flower was added in post...but nope. It was all there.

Softlighter II portraits.

Judson and I were asked to give a quick demonstration of the Softliter II (the one Annie Leibovitz uses) for portraits. This set up used a Softliter sl-5000 (the mid sized one) and a profoto head for the top portraits (Hey Paige!) , and a Canon 580x II for the bottom one (Mister Plax Photo trying to get the perfect Rembrandt...). Strobe was high on camera left and bounced on a white board to camera right. We used a 5D Mark II with 24-70 f2.8 USM Canon lens. You can see the Softliter reflected on the window...