Portraits of Marzena

This is Marzena, the "Z" is pronounced like a "soft G". If you guessed Polish you're correct. She's a colleague of mine at work, she works downstairs in the Camera Department though. She's got really nice eyes and a genuine smile. A couple weeks ago she cut her hair really short and dyed it blonde, or I guess platinum blonde, almost white? Anyways, I thought it looked really good on her, so I asked her if I could shoot some portraits of her.

So this weekend I stopped by her house for a couple hours. I was hoping to get some outdoor shots as she lives like 2 minutes away from the Botanical Gardens, and also some indoor shots with nice natural window light. We ended up only doing the indoor shots, but that's cool cause I was super happy with what we got. I don't think I've ever gotten this many "keepers" out of one session with anyone, well, maybe with Aoife. But in many ways I think that is because Marzena and Aoife were very similar. Both super relaxed in front of the camera, and they moved naturally on their own. No stiff models not knowing what to do next here.

In all honesty though, Marzena has done some modelling work in her past. I think she said she did some legit work about 10 years ago, and even did some modelling for a local Wellington designer a couple years ago. It's sooo much nicer to shoot someone who's comfortable in front of the camera! Ya, and she's a bit of a ham too :)

Purely by coincidence she was wearing a really cool top, it had a mossy green patch on the front, sheer shoulders, and knitted neck and sleeves. It ended up looking awesome against the wall in the first room which was the same shade of green. She never realized until I mentioned it today :)

So as usual I processed a lot of images in multiple looks. For some reason they seemed to work well with many different tones, at least I think so. I was pleased that Marzena seemed to agree when I showed them to her today.

These last few are from a new series I'm going to try and add to with anyone I shoot in the future...Heart In Your Hands. Kinda hokey, but I've seen some similar photos online that I really liked and thought it'd be a cute idea to pursue over time.

Portfolio Shoot: Laura Surrich (Part 1)

Portfolio shoot for Laura. Model, Actress, and Singer...and soon to be an Interviewer on an upcoming television poker series. I'm helping her rebuild/expand her current portfolio and in return she'll be my modelling muse for some concepts I'd like to try for my stock photo accounts. This was our first session so yes a lot of these will look similar. She only changed outfits once and there are only so many interesting angles to shoot in a borrowed conference room. I'm developing all the ones I think look decent to give her as wide a variety as possible to choose from. Hopefully those choices will expand as we do more shoots in other locations. I think this first one was as straightforward as it can get.

...hmmm...ya, this one sort of looks like a generic Passport shot :) ...but I like the way the details in her collarbone and neck area look sort of like a pencil sketch...and NO, she wasn't topless, it just looks that way.

Autumn And A Few Random Images

Well not everyone is enjoying glorious Spring weather, some of us are the exact opposite. The first official day of Autumn arrived several weeks ago, but the summer weather seemed to be lingering around, much to everyone's delight I'd imagine.

It's been a while since I've been able to enjoy the Fall colours in Toronto and I hear the place to go in New Zealand to see nice Fall colours is down to the South Island, Christchurch, Otago, probably Queenstown too. Not sure if they have more Deciduous trees than the North Island? Anyways, I was out wandering around last weekend scouting for locations for some upcoming portfolio shoots, and I went back to the Botanical Gardens to see if there'd be any green left. All the flower beds themselves are pretty much just soil now, but the lawns are still green, and there were surprisingly a few trees changing colours! AAHHHhhhh....almost like being home :P So I snapped a couple pics of the colours...sad in comparison to an entire forest full of coloured trees, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

This was one of the locations I thought might be good, it was a small patch of grass with a huge tree in the background turning orange, yellow and brown. This photo however was just me being nerdy trying to get an interesting photo out of the location with no real subject to shoot...I kinda like it though. Would've been better if there was a small mushroom or something in the grass to be a focal point....whatever...

Random park bench under a tree...kind of makes me wonder what Central Park in NYC is like in Autumn?

On my same scouting mission, I went back to visit a location I had stumbled upon months ago. On the way up to the Wind Turbine in Newtown, there is an area high in the hills with remnants of war time concrete bunkers. There are in fact many of these scattered around the hilltops in Wellington. Evidence of a time past. This is overlooking Wellington City and Wellington Harbour, looking North.

Just a group of friends hanging out enjoying the views.

While loading these recent images into Lightroom, I came across a few random photos from around town that I had previously taken, but not bothered to look at. This was one of them from mid summer this year. It was the weekend I was playing with Kristie's Mamiya. I was taking random portraits of strangers (pre 100 Strangers project), but since I didn't have a proper light meter, I was using my Canon to take test shots to get exposure readings, then shooting one final on film. This was one of my test shots of two friends enjoying the sun along the harbourfront path, sitting behind Te Papa Museum.

...and a couple of random shots from the office...

Julian, he's one of the other guys I share an office with, he's Kiwi. This is just us playing around with a big piece of glass...85mm f/1.2 lens.

Ron, fellow Canuck from Calgary. He actually worked at CORE in toronto, but I didn't know him back then...but he says he remembers me for how much butter I used to put on my bagels in the morning...hahaha...ugh. I needed to get an idea of the depth of field on this lens at f/1.2, and at what distances it is 'manageable'. Up close and personal in the image above, the DOF is so shallow it's almost impossible to use..you really need to be steady or your focus will be completely off...I was trying to focus on his eyes in this shot, but you'll notice it's the tip of his nose that is in focus and less than a centimetre back from that everything else is already soft. Super fun lens to use, you just need to be diligent.

Even at around 20 feet away, your DOF is only about 8 inches...but I can still manage to screw that up...I think I actually got his reflection in the mirror in focus...oops :)