skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Second session with Renee. The empahsis on this shoot was to do a bunch of headshots and then do a shot down on Lambton Quay with her running in the dress. In the end I didn't want to rush the Lambton Quay shoot, plus traffic in the city was pretty heavy that day due to several events along the waterfront and it being an awesome day weather-wise, so we ended up just staying indoors doing headshots and other fun shots. I couldn't have asked for a better location to shoot than her apartment as it's totally amazing for photos. Big, lots of clear wallspace to shoot against, BIG, amazing light in every room...even the bathroom had wicked light!!! Did I mention BIG? Plus it was just so convenient for the both of us to be able to be in our own space with nobody bothering us, and the comfort of being in her own apartment with all her wardrobe and makeup options.
This is now one of my favourite processed black and white looks for headshots. While processing a black and white shot from one of Laura Surrich's shoots last year, I ended up with a look that resembled a pencil sketch that I thought was interesting. The shot above is a further refinement of that style.
Man I love Renee's long hair, there's just so many things you can do with it :) Unfortunately I didn't remember to try any of the other quirky hair shots I had wanted to do...maybe next time.
Slightly alternative colour toning. I like it as a 'stylized portrait' but I'll have to wait and see what she thinks of it. No she's not naked, it's just cropped to look that way for a clean and uncluttered headshot.
I had mentioned doing a compilation of different expressions but this isn't it, we didn't really shoot any specifically, these are just some that I caught along the way.
For the past year or so I've been in love with backlit shots after seeing a couple really talented photogs on flickr rocking them (Kevin Russ and MGM). There's just something very etheral about them. I don't get to shoot them very often though as it requires either very early morning or very late afternoon sunlight, low in the sky which means you also need a somewhat clear line of sight to the horizon or at least no downtown office buildings or local mountains getting in the way. You can do similar things in studio but it usually requires a lot of light output. In the case of Renee's apartment though, an entire west facing wall of floor to ceiling frosted glass will do the trick! So nice how the blown out light source from behind wraps around all sides of your subject...except in this case there's no bonus lens flare...oh well.
Alternate processing of two nearly identical shots.
...more to come...
It's been quite a while since I first met Renee on the set of Simon Brown's short film First Light, almost one year ago, and I've wanted to do a proper photoshoot with her ever since. She's super nice and totally fun to shoot with...and I guess it doesn't hurt either that she's pretty and has gorgeous long brown hair :)
This weekend my colleague Simon Brown filmed his movie "First Light". A short film with no dialogue, featuring 3 local Actors (Renee Cataldo, Phil Peleton, and James Butters). James (Ogle) and I volunteered to be the "on set Stills Photographers" for Simon. Originally I was to do Saturday's shoot, and James would do Sunday, but luckily for me they let me double team Sunday with James as well. I've always wanted to hang around on set to see what happens behind the scenes of shooting a movie, and after listening to my friend Matt Mueller's comments about his job (he's one of the Photographers that works in the Camera Department, he's usually on set shooting stills for lighting reference but he also doubled as the Stills Photographer on The Lovely Bones film shoot), I figured this would be a totally fun opportunity, and it was!
My alarm clock went off at 4am Saturday morning, no, not by mistake. It felt like I almost pulled a muscle in my neck cause the alarm scared the crap out of me. My master plan of going to bed 'early' the night before was foiled, by me fooling around with some other photos I had just taken that day for Jess until around 1:30am. Anyways, it was pitch black, cold, and to make things more interesting it was also raining! First call on set was for 6am, but I had to get to Simon's house by 5:15am where the Actors were getting their makeup done.
Up on Sunday at a leisurely 7am. First call was 7:30am, but since it was James' day I knew I could sleep in a little. We returned to Princess Bay to finish all the shots that got rained out on Saturday, and when I showed up at 8am, they had just finished setting up "unit" (the on set area that has all the food, etc.). No bad weather on Sunday, and by lunch the sun had actually come out and it was relatively nice out. So James and I double teamed shooting from opposite angles, and taking turns holding reflector cards on the Actors while filming. The day finished up around 6pm with the last shot filmed just minutes after losing available light (from the sun).
Overall a super fun weekend for me. Hey, someone wants me to run around all day shooting photos on set...sign me up! Now I know why Matt likes his job so much :) The only black spot on my weekend...somehow managing to lose 250 photos, and to make things worse they were the ones I most wanted to see! ...%@*&!! Candid shots of the Actors running back and forth along the beach in between takes, and a few still portraits of them under a tree. I think when I was dumping my cards onto my harddrive at lunch, somehow it didn't copy the entire card over. It said "Copy Completed", but I've now learned my lesson the hard way and will verify the contents BEFORE wiping my card clean...ugh. Well...I still came away with a few shots that I liked, so it wasn't a total loss.
And so ends the first day of filming...on to the next day!
This is me goofing around in between takes.
I wanted to try some outdoor lighting techniques with some new gear so I asked my friend/model Renee if she'd like to help me out by sitting for me. Since she'd be my muse for the day we decided to go the extra step to make the images at least useful for her portfolio, so we went out to a couple shops in town that let me borrow stuff...thanks I Love Paris and Moochi :)
The weather didn't cooperate though so we ended up staying indoors and just played around with the gear in other setups.
