Tag Archives: photography

Fashion, Models

Shelley in lingerie

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Shelley-Ann is a relatively new member of the Fashion Collective, who answered a casting call from me. We had arranged to do a series of shots and as the second one involved the use of my paddling pool, we started them all around my back yard. We roped in another member of the Fashion Creative, Sam Moredo to do the makeup for the shoot.

We have an area at the back of the section with a very large tree and our woodshed which provided a great location.

The weather for the whole day had been extremely changeable, with short runs of blue skies followed by rain. I initially started using my Godox speed light in a 24″ softbox for the initial shots but then brought in the Godox AD600 and out it in the seven foot Westcott umbrella. There was just enough room under the trees for it to fit.

Towards the end of this section of the shoot, the cloud decided to break and sunlight started to stream through resulting in very strong differences between light and shadow.

Concept Images

In print again

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This is another post that is a little overdue in being completed, but is part of my New Year resolution to get more content on the site.

The completed “Buzz at the Hive” image

Each year the Photographic Society of New Zealand publishes a hard copy book that profiles images submitted from its members. The number of submissions always exceed the available space so it is quite an achievement to get an image selected.  Each year the book includes a special section where your are asked to submit to a theme. The theme for the 2018 edition was “Kiwiana”.

For my overseas readers New Zealanders refer to themselves as “kiwis” (coming from our national bird and not the shorten version of kiwifruit). Kiwiana is a set of images that depict those things that we would instantly recognise as part of the culture.

When the theme was announced I know instantly what I wanted to submit. A classic Kiwi toy is a wooden pull-along called “Buzzy bee”, and our parliament building executive wing is called the Beehive. Therefore all I had to do was capturing buzz at the hive.

The Buzzy Bee

The process was relatively straight forward. I figured out the angle I wanted with the camera on a tripod and then shot a blank plate of the buildings. As I wanted the image reasonable in focus across a wide range the camera was set at f20. I had to take several images so i could remove the tourist who were milling around it.

The Parliament complex with the Beehive in the background

I had originally planned to attach the bee to a cross pole by way of fishing nylon, but my wife rightly pointed out that this would be very hard to control. We therefore settled on clamping it underneath to the boom pole. She then proceeded to wave the bee round as I took multiple shots.

Once back at the office I downloaded the images and then went through and worked out which worked best. It was then a relative simple matter of loading the images into a stack in Photoshop and masking out what I didn’t want. As the images had all been shot in the same location this was a relatively simple process with the only area requiring more work was were the pole had attached to the bee.

Then to make the image more realistic I add shadows to the ground under the bees closest to the camera.

I had high hopes that the image would be selected and was really pleased that it was. That made the third image selected over the years for the publication.

Events

Pugs and strippers

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Occasionally a job comes along that sounds to both have the potential for a lot of fun, but equally stressful.

Venus Star is a Wellington entrepreneur, who has a range of business ventures, one of which is organising male strip reviews. The original brief was to shoot the show on the Saturday night, and then on the Sunday to shoot the performers with a group of pugs.

As it turned out I had to pass over the show to another photographer but decided to keep the shoot with the boys and dogs.

Venus had booked a hall for the shoot, which I had not seen so it meant that the car was loaded with a while of gear just in case. As it turned out it had a large stage with black curtains at the back.

I set up three lights all in the row across the stage so that it would have fairly even lighting while the dogs raced around.

I thought that we may have had problems with the dogs but as it turned out they were really easy to deal with.

We shot both individual and group images with them, and the advantage of the lighting position was that I didn’t have to move them. This was a major bonus as it meant the whole shoot was fairly quick.

 

 

Models

Back to the waterfall

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It has been nearly three years since i made the trek up the Birchville dam track to my favourite waterfall. I would have to say that after the events if this shoot it is likely to be my last there, as the day turned up one issue after another.

I had some free time so I hooked up with Katy and we decided to do a shoot with various outfits and drapes. We got to the location on a beautiful day to discover a family already then and swimming in the hole at the base of the top waterfall. That meant that we had to go further down the hill and start shooting at the bottom.

I had decided to wear a pair of water shoes that had not been worn in a while and I had not realised that the rubber in them had perished. No sooner as  I started working out at the bottom then they started to fall apart. That meant for most of the shoot I had to struggle over rocks in bare feet.

The light in the lower area was very dappled and therefore it was a struggle to keep the highlights from blowing out while still having enough detail show up in the darker areas. In the end I positioned a flash set on high speed sync to add a bit more light to Katy’s place.

One of the fabrics we had brought was a 5m length of white lace so we decided to sit Katy on the rocks on the first level and drape it down and shoot it from above.

The pose and position was great but with the strong back lighting I could not see Katy’s face so I climbed up the rocks at the side to position the light on the same level as her. I was just about at the top when i branch i grabbed gave way and I fell about 2 metres onto rocks below hitting on the my right side just above the buttocks. The areas instantly swelled up but I continued to work through and get the shots.

By the time the family had left so we moved back up to the top and shot around the top waterfall. Fortunately I had been able to find out from them how deep the water was at the base of the fall so we were able to get Katy in fairly close.

We finished up with another material draped over the large rock at the top of the area.

Overall I was pleased with the results of the shoot. However over the next couple of days the bruising on my back really came in and it took nearly a fortnight for it not to be sore.

Fashion, Models

All wrapped up (NSFW)

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By means that I won’t go into I came in my possession a whole lot of music tapes that were destined for landfill. So I thought could I use them in a shoot, and the answer was yes. Several nights of extracting the tapes gave me a large container full of them.

After the original model for the shoot bailed twice, I arranged to shoot with Verity. We started in the bathroom using the tape in place of water in the bath.

Then we moved out to a set I had created in the garage and shot a slightly different look starting with using the tape as a dress. It created a unique look, but probably not one for wearing in the wind.

I then changed it up and brought in some of the empty cassette cases.

Lighting for the bath shoot was a single godox strobe in a 24″ beauty dish. Lighting in the other location was a 7″ umbrella behind me to provide a base light and a beauty dish camera right.

Fashion, Models

Shoot out at the Dakota

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Dakota-5Of of the great things about being part of a creative collective is that opportunities come about to shoot in unusual locations. This was the case of a shoot in a cowboy themed bar in Wellington. We were given the opportunity to spend several hours in there before the bar opened.

It was great working with models Rachel, Hayley and Michael both individually and together.

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Rachel

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Michael & Rachel

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Michael & Rachel

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Rachel rides the mechanical bull

Lighting for the series was mainly done with a single Godox AD600 strobe in a 24″ beauty dish.

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Rachel with a quick change

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Rachel & Hayley

Personal Projects, Tattoos

The Tattoo Project – Sharon

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When I arrived at Pixie’s place she had her friend Sharon there for support and assistance. Now I have always said that I have absolutely no objections to models have friends with them on shoots, provided that they don’t interfere in the shoot. In fact I have called on them to assist on more than one occasion or even to model.

In this case it was the latter, because when I say Sharon’s tats and the fifties style of outfit she was wearing I just had to include her. It took a little convincing but with Pixie’s help she because part of the project.

Lighting for these was from the single 7 foot umbrella.

Personal Projects, Tattoos

The Tattoo Project – Pixie

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Pixie contacted me about taking part in the shoot and as she lived in Whanganui we arranged for me to shoot her on the way back from  the Photographic conference in Stratford.

The original intention had been to shoot Pixie on  the same backdrop as used in the previous shoot so that was packed in the car. But when I arrived at her place that completely changed. She lived in this old villa that was in original condition. The kitchen in particular had an amazing retro feel to it that I knew that I had to shoot her there.

That posed some issues as it was not very large and I was trying to light is using my seven foot umbrella. We managed though. The one issue with using an actual location was that I was getting reflections on the windows from the umbrella.

This was solved using the double tap approach. Basically you take two images in succession. The second one goes off without flash but is such a short duration behind the first that the subject tends not to have moved. You then combine the two images in Photoshop and you use the non-flashed image as the replacement for the windows.

Personal Projects, Tattoos

The Tattoo Project – Larissa

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Larissa is a tattoo artist herself and when she learned of the project wanted to be involved. When we initially met she was about to have more work done, so we agreed to defer the shoot to allow for this. I ended up shooting her in the same session as Les so it incorporated the same lighting arrangement.

Larissa was a lot more shier than Les so I had to deal with clothing getting in the way of the tatts. You could clearly see how the work was going to evolve over the next year as it was filled in. Unfortunately she moved to Auckland just after the shoot so that opportunity is not available.

Personal Projects, Tattoos

The Tattoo Project – Les

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When I started planning the Tattoo project I had always envisaged that the starting and ending images in the set would be of traditional Maori moko’s. For my overseas visitors these are tradition tattoos practiced by the original settlers in New Zealand called Maoris. (you can read all about them here on Wikipedia)

Therefore when I saw Les sitting in Lampton Square eating his lunch I managed to find the courage to go an ask him to be part of the project.

Having a full face moko certainly drew attention to Les and he explained to me the significance of it to him. For Maori the tattooing had much more significance than simple body art.

He also said that it was often a conversation starter and he was used to be approached, although people were sometimes hesitant. Part of that is that while tattoos in New Zealand is fairly common generally it only those with criminal connection that cover their faces. Les has tattoos that extend over pretty much over his entire body.

Lighting for the shoot was based on a setup that I learned from Chris Knight. My seven foot umbrella was positioned behind me to fill the details in the shadow and the main accent light was provided by a beauty dish positioned camera right and about 45 degree angle from the subject.