Look One: Create interest with a gelled strobe

5DMKII, 85mm f/1.8 lens, 1/80, f/2.5, ISO 100.

Since I had little ambient light, the only thing I could control was the light that I could add. We placed a orange gelled (full CTO) 430EX strobe on a stand behind Siri, camera left. We stuck my bag on the base to keep it planted. The second strobe (530EX) with a shoot through umbrella was placed directly in front of Siri. For anyone who has worked in windy conditions, you will know the fear of having an unsecured umbrella stand right in front of your model. Models don’t exactly love it when light stands impale them.

So as an added precaution, I kept keep one foot on the base of the umbrella stand. At this point I was flying solo, so I had to hold the light disc in my left hand bouncing light on the right side of her face, while pressing the shutter one-handed. Tricky stuff!

Look Two: Change up your framing & processing

5DMKII, 85mm f/1.8, 1/125, f/2.5, ISO 100.

Because Siri is both a model and an actress, I wanted to capture a fashion/beauty shot. I used the same lighting as look one, but framed much tighter to focus on her makeup and skin. I also processed this a lot more severely and creatively to give it an edgier feel.

Look Three: Shoot through an umbrella

5DMKII, 85mm f/1.8 lens, 1/60, f/1.8, ISO 100.

In this shot, I took away the second hair light strobe and used a really shallow DOF to make her hair almost disappear into the background. I wanted to the shot to be about her face and her eyes and her gorgeous skin. I used one strobe (580EX) shot through an umbrella really close to her face to create a nice soft, even light.

This shoot was challenging, and forced me to change my lighting using off-camera flashes, instead of just relying on magic hour light. As you know I love warm light, but sometimes, rain clouds form, and light shifts from warm to cool, and your derelict barn location gets destroyed in a wind storm and you just have to wing it. That’s when all those hours of reading Strobist pay off!

I was a guest judge for the LG Denim DIY fashion competition on Thursday morning and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap a shot of the stunning Vancouver model, Chantel Elloway. We popped outside Pacific Centre for a few minutes. I didn’t have a bounce and it was a bit dark, so I asked Chantel to stand next to a white wall. This reflected some nice soft light on her face and hair.

The background was fairly dull, mainly shaded buildings and and street lamps, with the exception of a few sparkly circles of bokeh. I thought it would enhance the photo more lovely bokeh framing Chantel, so I went in and hand painted a bunch more in Photoshop. By individually cloning the existing bokeh circles on different layers with varying opacity, I was able to blend the painted bokeh into the photo.

I have a beauty shoot booked with lovely Chantel next week. I’m really exited to get some more great pictures with her.

We were chasing magic hour trying to capture soft, sultry backlit promo shots for musician, Kylee Epp. We sat there waiting for the sun to peek through a metal staircase just behind Kylee’s head, illuminating her hair and giving the photo a kiss of lens flare.

When the sun hit it’s mark, we had about 5 minutes to capture the perfect shot. Man, is magic hour a stressful time for photographers. I wait everyday for it, because honestly the light quality you get during magic hour (the hour before sunset) is unprecedented. Golden and warm and soft and yum! But, you have to be quick because magic hour melts fasta’ than budda on popcorn.

Some technical details of the shoot for all you Strobist photogeeks: We were shooting with the Canon Xti and the 85mm f/1.8 & the 50mm f/1.4 In order to create soft, warm light on her face we used Pocket Wizards (wireless radio transmitters) to trigger the 430EX with a 1/4 CTO gel at 1/4 power through a large shoot-through umbrella about 2ft (60cm) from her face.

If you listen to TWiP, you’ve probably heard Scott Bourne say this a few times: “The bigger the light source is and the closer to the subject the light is the softer the light will be.” He’s totally on it, so remember this rule. It’s golden.

Once we lost the light in the first location we booked it to Jericho Beach to catch some sexy sunset shots.

Ryland (the guy in charge of Redpilot Media) and I switched off taking shots and directing the shoot. It was cool to see the shots that resulted from two photographer’s combined creativity.

Plus, somebody needed to be in charge of the umbrella and flash as it was super windy. Earlier in the shoot, we totally bent this umbrella, when a gust of wind sent it crashing down on Kylee’s head. I told her that she was now one step closer to becoming a model. After all, you can’t really call yourself a model until you’ve had at least one piece of equipment fall on you or, like, fainted during a shoot cuz you haven’t eaten in like, a week.

Note to self: Invest in some sandbags or weights to keep light stands from on models. Keep granola bars in bag to feed starving models before they faint.

As we were losing light we roped in one of Kylee’s friends to hold a third 430EX with 1/4 CTO flash for a warm edge light. As you can tell, she was lovin’ every minute of it. I think she’s has future camera assistant written all over her face. o_0

Thanks for all your great Summertime shots! I’m really enjoying all your awesome entries for my first photo comp. If you haven’t already submitted something, join the Mostly Photos Comp group on Flickr and show us your best summer shot. I also encourage you to go look at other people’s shots and comment and discuss and inspire each other!

Let’s set the scene, shall we.

Year: Y2K
Location: Far East Queen St., TO
Character: Layer Girl
Wardrobe: All PVC: tube top, mini skirt, knee high boots
Hair: Due to the high humity frizz factor, my hair was straightened every 30 minutes for 12 hours
Make-up: Blue eyeshadow, Lipstick shade: “Not so innocent”
Season: Summer (during the worst heat wave in 20 years)

Magic moments:
1. When the wardrobe girl enhanced my cleavage using duct tape
2. When the other layer girl bent over to put on her boots and split the bottom seam of her pants and looked directly at me and said “Whatchu expect? I ain’t no white girl. I got some cuuurves.” Snap.
3. Faux buffing and blowing the lead singer’s nails
4. When the director ordered the PA to wipe my butt print from the leather stool I was sitting on between each take
5. When I realized I had to take the streetcar, then subway home at 3am with pictured make-up and boots because the zipper on said boots was stuck
6. Cutting PVC boots off with kitchen scissors at 4am

That’s Hot.

Check out “Ultrasensitive” featuring yours truly!