Category Archives: 2022 Shoots

2022 Shoots, Models

Cassie – studio shoot

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Cassie answered one of my modeling calls and we scheduled a shoot in the studio.  I wanted to go dramatic. So, I decided to use a single light. I also chose one of my old school backdrops.

The main light was my Godox AD600 in a 1.5 m octabox. Initially the light was positioned camera right at 90° angle with Cassie standing at the rear of the light. This creates the classic Rembrandt look.

Some models have the notion that they have a “right side” when it comes to photography. This belief is rooted in the idea that people have a more photogenic side of their face. They prefer this side to be captured. This preference can be due to slight asymmetries in facial features. It may also stem from personal insecurities. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of habit and comfort. As a photographer, it is essential to respect these preferences. You need to accommodate them to ensure the model feels confident. This helps ensure the results are flattering. Taking the time to discuss and identify the model’s preferred side can lead to a more successful and harmonious photoshoot.

The reality is that your model may have a strong preference for one side. If you shoot from the other side, then the odds are high. Two things will likely happen. Firstly, the model will be uncomfortable during the shoot and secondly they won’t like the resulting images. You may 

So after discussions with Cassie the light was changed to camera left. On the opposite side a large reflector was placed to fill in the shadows a little.

After the initial shots were taken the light was moved closer to the camera and at a 45°. This provided for in coverage and insured that we got catchlight in the eyes.

The wardrobe that Cassie brought with her consisted almost entirely of dark items. At the end of the show, I dressed in a white short wedding dress. This change was to add some variety. She had fun with these shoes in these shots and it showed in the final images. 

All of the images we shot with my Nikon Z6ii camera using a 24 -70 4.0 lens. The camera was in manual mode set a 1/200s f8 at ISO100. This is my standard setting for studio work. It provides a reasonable depth of field as well eliminating all ambient light. This means that I am in full control of the light.

2022 Shoots, Commerical Work, Fashion, Lighting

Mikki Summer – With a little Flash

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This is second post about the Mikki Summers session (www.mikkisummers.co.nz). In this post I am going to cover the images that made use of flash.

As I mentioned in the previous post the shoot with Katie took place around Wellington. Therefore, I did not want to be lugging too much gear around.

I knew there was a possibility that the natural light would not be sufficient in some circumstances. I took my Godox V1 speed light. I also took a small soft box and a lightweight light stand. The stand was easy to carry.

Most locations did have sufficient light. However, the first photo on this page had too much shadow. So the flash was used as a main light.

Where the flash really helped was when I found a location where the sun was beaming through a gap in the buildings. This enabled me to use it as a backlight.

So that I had full control the camera was placed in manual mode. I was shooting 1/200s at f4.5 ISO 100. At these setting Katie became heavily in shadow. I then brought the flash in camera right to illuminate Katie. This technique is called “fill flash”

Within the collection was a number of outfits that were designed to be worn around the home. In fact they could double as pyjamas. As Marie had booked the hotel room I thought it was a perfect opportunity to use it as well.

While the room was reasonably well it was not providing me with the quality of light that I was after. So I decided to use flash to compliment rather than overpower the ambient light. I did this by positioning the flash on the balcony outside of the windows. In this way it was coming from the same direction as the natural light.

We finished the shoot with Katie relaxing on the balcony. Flash was used again. At this stage, the area where she was sitting was in too much shade.

Having flash available was a good choice. It meant I was not limited by what the natural light would provide. Choosing a small, soft speed light stand was wise. It is lightweight and not too difficult to move around with.

2022 Shoots, Commerical Work, Fashion

Mikki Summer – Shoot around the city

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Mikki Summers (www.mikkisummers.co.nz) is a fashion brand created by Wellington designer Marie Wright. Rather than ready-made clothes they sell arrange of kits containing both the material and patterns for easy to wear outfits.

Marie is also a WOW designer. She was friends with some of the other designers that I had photographed. When she wanted images for a website revamp, she reached out to see if I was interested.

She told me truthfully that she did not where to begin with organising a shoot. So I arranged both the model and hair and make up.  I reached out to Katie who I had shot with on several occasions before to see if she was available. I figured that fitted the look that Marie was after. 

The shoot was planned for Wellington city. Marie booked a room in the central hotel. We used this as a base for the shoot.

I always like to scope out possible locations ahead of time. So, I travelled to Wellington two hours before we were here to start. This enabled me to identify locations that I thought would be suitable. This meant that I had a clear plan once the model was ready. I wanted to stay close to the hotel. This way, we did not lose too much time going back for costume changes.

We wanted to highlight the casual nature of the outfits. So, I picked areas that fitted the theme. I also knew of some interesting alleyways and backgrounds. 

All of the images shot with my Nikon Z6ii camera. All of the ones shown previously use a 70 -20 f2.8 lens. This meant I had total flexibility in how close or far I took the shots from. The camera was in Aperture priority mode at ISO100. The images were shot between f2.8 and f5.6 depending on how much of the background I wanted in focus.

All of the images below were shot using a 24-70 f4 lens with similar apertures.

Katie was a great model and we came away with a lot of variety of images. 

All of the images in this post used natural light alone. In the next post I will cover how flash was incorporated in several locations.

2022 Shoots, Sports

Richters Roller Derby Clash

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My daughter Samantha was taking an active role in promotions for the Richter roller derby club in Wellington. She asked me would I come and photograph two of the events being held at the Kilbirnie Recreation Centre.

I decided to take two cameras to the event. My main camera would be my Nikon D90 with a 70 -200mm f2.8 lens. This has been my “go to ” sports lens for many years. The D90 is a crop sensor camera meaning that the lens had an effective full frame equivalent range of 105-300mm

I had never shot at this location before. I figured it would not be that different from the many stadiums I had previously shot. I also knew that I would need to take a lot of images to get usable one. Therefore, I would be shooting in JPG’s rather than RAW’s.

This has two advantages. Firstly the cards can store more images. Secondly images would be written faster to the card, meaning that the camera’s buffer would not fill up so fast. Again that meant that a burst would have more images in.

The camera was set in shutter priority mode. In this mode you set the shutter speed and allow the camera to alter either the Aperture or ISO. I started with a shutter speed of 1/80s. I found that this was a little slow and so I increased it to 1/125s of the second. 

As a result the images were shot between f2.8 and f5 with an ISO range between 800 and 3200. Traditionally you would think that f2.8 would produce a very narrow depth of field. That is true if you are close to the subject. However the further you move away the greater the DOF becomes. As I was shooting some 40m away it was not an issue.

The action in roller derby is very fast and quite often a jumble of people. This makes focusing somewhat challenging for the camera. Generally speaking I would stay tracked on the Jammer. However, it was also good to capture the activities away from the main action. This includes team members waiting to be subbed in.

The second camera I took was my Lumix G9. For it I took two lenses. Ultra wide 14-28mm and a longer 90-300mm. I wanted to see how the camera would perform.

G9 1/80s f4 90mm ISO800
G9 1/125s f4.8 130mm ISO1600

The wide angle lens let me shoot images that was so different from the others. Such as being able to capture what the venue look like. Or putting the camera closer to the ground and shooting up.

G9 1/125s f2.8 28mm ISO1600
G9 1/125s f2.8 28mm ISO1600
G9 1/125s f2.8 28mm ISO1600

At the end of each match, there is always a group photo with everybody involved. The wide angle was perfect for those shots.

G9 1/10s f5.6 28mm ISO1600
G9 1/40s f6.3 28mm ISO3200

I ended up shooting over 3000 images in the two games. As the images were shot in JPG I knew that I would not be doing much processing to them. 

After importing them into Lightroom it set about culling them. I used the same approach as I normally do when handling large numbers of images. The first stage is a cull of images that are either out of focus, or where the focus is on the wrong place, or have other issues.

Then the second cull will look for those images that do not add to the record of the event. In the case of the games these included shots of the Jammer skating on their own. 

Finally I looked to crop any of the images to better center in on the action. I then loaded the final images onto a drive for the club to chose whatever they wanted. 

It was a full on evening with two games but I enjoy the challenge.

2022 Shoots, Concept Images, Nudes

American Beauty (NSFW)

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This is the final post covering a concept shoot with Rachel and around 300 vinyl records. As mentioned in the previous post the records were all classical discards from a bookfest that my wife is involved with.  In this shoot we recreated the famous flower scene from “American Beauty”.

For this set in addition to the records on the backdrop I covered the flooring with them. 

I positioned Rachel on the floor and then used records or pose to shoot. The camera was at the end of a boom arm over her. As it was tethered to the computer I was able to control it. Using the the boom enabled me to get the camera positioned level. This is much more preferable than standing on a stool and trying to take the shot.

The lighting was the same as the previous two posts. It consisted of a Godox AD600 shooting into a 1.5m softbox. This was positioned at Rachel’s head and shot along her body. The light was also elevated and then angled down. At the rear of the room my Elinchrom D400 was shooting into a 7 foot umbrella with diffusion covering it. This light was being fired by an optical slave built in.

In addition to the overhead shots I did shoot some from floor level so that we had a variety.

All of the images in this post were shot on my Lumix G9. The setting was 1/200s f8 ISO200. The focal lengths ranged was 24mm.

The angle of the main light did mean that I was getting some reflection/hotspots in some of the records. This was a relatively simple adjustment to fix in post. In the final images I also cloned in more records to fill blank spots on the floor. Some were also needed when I created the images using the 1.91:1 ratio used for Instagram landscape images.

The whole afternoon was enjoyable and Rachel really loved the Images that we produced during the sessions.

2022 Shoots, Concept Images, Nudes

Nude with the Records (NSFW)

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This is the second post covering a concept shoot with Rachel and around 200 vinyl records. As mentioned in the previous post the records were all classical discards from a bookfest that my wife is involved with.  

In the studio I had positioned two sheets of plywood as a backdrop. Onto this I attached overlapping records using small nails to hang them up. It took the best part of two hours to nail them all in. I lost count of how many times I hit my thumb during the process.

On the floor I placed plywood planking as I thought this gave a better look than the carpet. The records stack was made up of groups of ten records glued together with a central steel rod giving it stability.

The video below shows what the overall studio set look like as well as the lighting positions. 

The actual lighting is shown in the diagram below.  It consisted of a Godox AD600 shooting into a 1.5m softbox positioned 90° to Rachel. At the rear of the room my Elinchrom D400 was shooting into a 7 foot umbrella with diffusion covering it. This light was being fired by an optical slave built in. The video shows a hairlight but this was not actually used.

For the second shoot Rachel was naked and used records to create images that wouldn’t get me banned from IG. Rachel is comfortable being nude in front of camera so the shoot flowed easily. 

My studio has mirrors on both sides so we also used them in the shots.

All of the images in this post were shot on my Lumix G9 at the following setting 1/200s f8 ISO200 with focal lengths ranging from 24mm to 32mm. The combination of 1/200s and f8 ensures that I have full control of the light while giving me a reasonable depth of field. I am operating in a small studio with only 2.4m (8 feet) available between my model and camera. So if I want full body I am forced to shoot wide. This is not an issue if you place the subject in the middle third of the frame.

2022 Shoots, Concept Images

With the Records

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In this post, I’m going to cover a concept shoot with Rachel. In the next two posts, I’ll share more about the experience with around 200 vinyl records. The records were all classical discards from a bookfest that my wife is involved with.  I had them stored in boxes in the garage for around two years before I started using them. I had used a small number to build a stool which was incorporated in my shoot with Lucy.

In the studio I had positioned two sheets of plywood as a backdrop. Onto this I attached overlapping records using small nails to hang them up. It took the best part of two hours to nail them all in. I lost count of how many times I hit my thumb during the process.

On the floor  I placed plywood planking as I thought this gave a better look than the carpet. The records stack consisted of groups of ten records. These were glued together. A central steel rod gave it stability.

The video below show what the overall studio set look like as well as the lighting positions.

The actual lighting is shown in the diagram below.  It consisted of a Godox AD600 shooting into a 1.5m softbox positioned 90° to Rachel. At the rear of the room my Elinchrom D400 was shooting into a 7 foot umbrella with diffusion covering it. This light was being fired by an optical slave built in. The video shows a hairlight but this was not actually used.

For the first shoot, I had Rachel wear a selection of clothes and accessories that I had acquired from thrift shops. I felt these items had a 1960s sort of vibe to them.

As with most of my shoots I tend to not direct the model, but rather let them do what they want. I find that this produces much more relaxed and better images. It does help when you are working with an experience model such as Rachel.

All of the images in this post were shot on my Lumix G9 at the following setting 1/200s f8 ISO200 with focal lengths ranging from 24mm to 32mm. The combination of 1/200s and f8 ensures that I have full control of the light while giving me a reasonable depth of field. I am operating in a small studio with only 2.4m (8 feet) available between my model and camera. So if I want full body I am forced to shoot wide. This is not an issue if you place the subject in the middle third of the frame.

2022 Shoots, Concept Images, Lighting, Models

Devon Wet Play

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The second set with Devon involved water. She wanted to look like an athlete that had been competing really hard and was covered in sweat. She had brought some strips of fabric that she fashioned into a top and gloves.

The example images she had shown me had a high degree of contrast. I knew that we needed to go with a punchy hard light. We essentially used it to create shadows in the previous post. It was a simple matter of removing the blinds. Then, we slightly adjusted the strength of the light.

Devon is a real trooper when it comes to getting into a character. She was not phased when she was asked to put baby oil over her skin. Then she was sprayed with water. The oil has two effects. Firstly it prevents the water from absorbing quickly into the skin and secondly it increases the skins reflection. Both of these add to a higher contrast image.

All images were shot using my Lumix G9 1/200s f8 ISO 200 at an equivalent focal length of 50mm. These settings ensured that I had full control over the ambient light.

Devon was really happy with the way that shoot turned out.. 

2022 Shoots, Concept Images, Lighting, Models

Devon Shadow Play

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After we had such a great time with the Barbie shoot I arranged another session with Devon. I left it up to her to decide what concepts she wanted to shoot. As before, she created a Pinterest board. From it, we determined that she was looking for two quite distinct looks. The first involved heavy shadow and the second water.

In this post we’re going to cover the first one.

I knew from previous shoots that you could create interesting effects by shooting hard light through Venetian blinds. This appears quite often in film noir images. The key to getting hard shadow was that light had to be very hard. It also needed to be positioned reasonably close to the blinds.

The shoot was planned for the same weekend as the more elaborate record shoot with Rachel that will be covered in later posts. For that I had built a wall using plywood panels. These had interesting features in them so I did not bother covering them.

I clamped a bamboo Venetian blind to the crossbar of light stand and then positioned a strobe in front of it. It was in a 7 inch reflector which insured it delivered a lot of power.

Devon went through a number of costume changes so that we had a variety of images to use.

All images were shot using my Lumix G9 1/200s f8 ISO 200 at an equivalent focal length of 50mm. These settings ensured that I had full control over the ambient light.

The images were exactly what Devon wanted. 

2022 Shoots, Lighting, Models

Mumtaz – on the couch

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The final outfit that Mumtaz brought was a red sequinned red dress with a long slit up one side. Again it was a good opportunity to show off Mumtaz’s legs.

Unlike the previous shoots, I wanted this one to be slightly more relaxed. So, I brought in a black leather couch for her to recline on.

I asked her to think about a scene where she was relaxing after a night out on the town. Giving a model a concert also helps get them into the right frame of mind for the shoot.

The lighting did not change from the previous shots. The main light was in 1.5m octabox positioned camera right and at a 90° angle to Mumtaz.  

The grid was placed back on the the 7” reflector that was positioned camera left to act as a hairlight. 

As with the previous set on the stool gave Mumtaz a prop to interact with.

All of the images in this post were shot with my Lumix G9. The settings were 1/200s f8 ISO 200. The focal lengths were at 24mm.  Shooting so wide did mean that I was capturing more than I wanted. Fortunately Photoshop makes it fairly easy to remove elements you don’t want from the image.

The other impact of shooting so wide is that it makes anything close to the camera larger. In the final image, her legs are really emphasized.

It was a fun afternoon shooting with Mumtaz.