Candace, Elizabeth, Rachel

So this past weekend has been super eventful.
A friend of mine who is a make up artist got hired for a job around my area(from Charlotte, NC) and she hit me up to give me a heads up. This girl knows what she is doing so I definitely did not hesitate to collab with her.

So..

Candace wanted to use an octopus in a picture which I thought was a pretty rad idea. I knew I wanted a headshot immediately but more importantly I wanted really good eye make up (elizabeth tolley ftw) and it on her face somehow to make it interesting and gross.

Now the lighting.. I never tried a shot like this and I wanted to approach it differently JUST to see what the results could look like. First I tried 3 lights. A bare abr800, 2 sb800's with umbrellas for fill in specific areas. I was going to use the ringflash to light up her face DECENTLY and have the umbrellas fill in shadows a LITTLE and mostly bring out the pattern on the background. Turns out the background was a little too dark in color and sb800's with umbrellas couldn't really get the job done at F/11 so scratch that idea. I would have to bump up my ISO to have the sb's do anything significant so SCRATCH that idea. You'll notice how I totally didnt even use the background, sigh.. waste of 5 bucks!. Then I tried an ab1600 boom with a beauty dish with the sb800's EHHHHH nope. the bam, abr800 on a boom with the 56" moon unit to get the job done. nice even light and strong enough to get what I needed. I dont have a large softbox YET for my ab1600 but I will shortly.. anyways heres the shot.



Next we have Rachel.. this wardrobe was picked out by Elizabeth, so thank you Liz!
Now for this shot we did in my house.. well my parents house.. anyways. We have these cool columns in the living room and I love the color of the hardwood floors and the white paint on everything. I KNOW the background doesn't fit the wardrobe but thats what I wanted. The colors on her outfit would stand out even more and also show a weird contrast of colors overall. Anyways I dont think I worded that very well but this isn't english so whatever. I originally took exposure of the frame without her (I had my camera on a tripod the whole time) so I could get a good exposure of the ambient since I would be working with a super high f/stop. BUT I ended up dragging my shutter to about 25th of a second to get the chandelier looking KIND of cool, and the background just natural overall. I used an ab1600 with a beauty dish boomed as my main. I like the BD because it really doesnt spill light all over the place so the background usually remains NATURAL. Dont really know how else to put that but anyways. I then place an sb800 on the ground and layed an umbrella over it to fill in some shadows too. I think I was working with a pretty high fstop, probably f/10 or little more. Anyways, I photoshopped to the max on these but I am happy overall.



Next we have the headshot. I used 3 lights. 1 sb800 with an HONL gride on it behind her, 1 sb800 up high through an umbrella for hair light and a bare abr800 for the main light. The colors of the wall and stuff was all photoshopped to get that amber sepia look which I dig ALOT. I really like these shots cause the makeup is just INSANE



click all images to see bigger on my FLICKR!!!

Diane's wedding and bridal shot

So i help my friend ross shoot a wedding for a friend of ours. It was pretty laid back and overall stress free, thank God. I took charge of the groom shots and wanted to do something funny with the trees. The guys were pretty funny as well so that only made my job easier! I really like how this almost looks like a band shot.

Also during diane's bridal session the commodore had the perfect word on the sign thingie majig. I guess you could see the marquee??!
Anyways here are the shots, hope you enjoy!







click thumbnails to see bigger!

bobby boldasss y Candace Filip

So me and candace went over to bobby's to eat some food and get a shot. It was cold as hell outside so I wanted to stay indoors. for the sake of having a red nose to edit in pictures. Anyways his couch was pretty awesome and I was looking to get a simple color scheme shot in my port. Definitely going to shoot him again when time allows me, which actually, now that I am unemployed should be easy to do?!!

Also here is a candace and our puppy lilly. I like both of these shots... obviously!





AGAIN, click thumbnail to see bigger!

wave church project

So continuing from the last update I did for wave church, I finally edited majority of the staff shots. Here are my two favs. The rest of these were clean and simple, but as far as location, these two killed it for me.

and ps.. thanks for justin(7citiesphotography) for helping me, made my life a lot easier for sure!


josh hill, the legend.


setup shot :)



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Rachel Dashae

So I've been meeting to shoot this model for quite a number of months now and never really got around to it until recently. We met up with a friend of mine Jess who also does photography as well(and good at it!). Anyways, it wasn't quite the concept I wanted but the images came out really good, at least I think so.

The set up I used I believe was 1 abr800 with the 56" moon unit, 1 sb800 to her left through an umbrella, and then Candace held 1 sb800 bare at her right side.

Here are the shots!
and of course, heavy post processing was done -_-





again, just click on the thumbnails if you want to see them bigger!

Days Difference

A couple weeks back Days Difference contacted me about promos they would be needing to promote themselves to get on a couple huge tours. I definitely jumped at the opportunity because for one, they are a pretty big band, two there music is pretty good, and three, they are on universal. This was pretty much my first big label shoot and I think I did pretty good to my standards.

ALSO, I used 5 lights.. 5 lights?! I never used 5 lights before really but I think it worked out pretty good. A couple guys came out from this photography forum I am on and it definitely helped so much. I am so thankful they came, cause I could probably only manage 3 lights top by myself. Heres the setup..



and here are two shots I got that I liked.
One has lens flare but I don't really care too much since it was more of a fun shot than anything else.
I also did a number of face retouching as well to clean things up a bit.

enjoy.





just click on the thumbnails and it will take you to my flickr account so you can see them bigger :)

update after another.... long time

sooo I have a lot more new material since I last updated this blog.
Also other than new material I got new equipment which is what I have been wanting for sooo long. I got an AB1600 with a 22" beauty dish along with a light stand a boom arm attachment. This new stuff will definitely change my images for the better but at the same time keep my style. Here is the first image I made with it. Its of my girlfriend candace and we basically just shot it in my parents living room. It was influenced by a photographer name mojokiss(www.mojokiss.com) who is definitely an inspiration in my eyes.



More on the next post!