Hannah

Shooting Hannah (and Wen) was quite a learning experience for me.  I had limited gear (speedlights, umbrellas, eBay softbox, and reflector) and tight space (my hotel room).  To be fair, I knew my challenges before I set out on my trip; but I didn’t realize how little I knew about lighting in small spaces.

Wen and Only Wen

About a month ago, I had the chance to spend a weekend in Taipei.  To kill time, I decided to scout for models via Modelmayhem.  Since I was traveling, I was only able to bring limited gear.  The other restriction was location;  the temperature outside was 90+degF with high humidity.  Given these two challenges, I decide to do a glamour set in my hotel room.  I chose Wen because her portfolio shows she is experienced with my theme;  sure enough, she did not disappoint me.  She is full of energy and always excited to improvise on my ideas no matter how dumb they were.  The excitement she brought made the shoot extra fun.

Nemuro Wine – 2009

A couple years back, I wrote about photographing the Nemuro wine bottle; which turned out to be a lot of fun because I was able to do it with only 2 lights.  I received the 2009 vintage a few days ago.   My first reaction after seeing the bottle was: “*%^$*!, black label on black bottle…”

Liz Ashley in Jeans

From my second shoot with fabulous Liz Ashley.  I wanted to create a set with tight pants and tied top.  Liz didn’t disappoint me.

Eliz

I usually don’t shoot nude or bodyscapes.  Not that I don’t like them; it’s just that I have not found the secret sauce to make the pictures come out glamorous.  Recently, I started to understand what makes bodyscape pictures stand out – shadows.

Lighting a Translucent Bottle

Ever since I shot the Nemuro Cabernet, I’ve been very curious about how to shoot a translucent wine bottle.  Obviously, I could have used the exact same setup; but it won’t bring out the color of the liquid inside the bottle.  After some research, I found a website called DYI Photography; which described a very clever way to photograph beer (hmmm… beeer…).  The main idea is to light the bottle almost entirely from the bottom.  Here is my attempt.

Charilie – The Glamour Girl

The hardest part after a great shoot is picking pictures.  Specially when you have a model like Charlie then every picture feels like a keeper.  Charlie simply oozes glamour with every pose she makes.

Shooting Charlie

Gabriella’s shoot got my shooting adrenaline going.  I found myself liking fashion and glamor photography more and more.  I started scouting for new subjects to shoot and came across Charlie Kristine.  What can I say about Charlie… she is absolutely gorgeous and statuesque.  She seemed a little disappointed that I wanted to shoot more fashion; cause she is all about glamour!

Rim Light

Here is a picture of Ms. Golnaz.  Her hair is lit with a light behind her.  Creating a nice rim which separates her from the background.

White Balance

What is that white balance thing?

Most people don’t notice it, but light is not exactly white.   It has different color depending on where the light is coming from.  For example, the incandescent light (old fashioned light bulb) has an orange tint; which makes things look warm.   So if one were to look at a white piece of paper, it should look orange.  However, our brain is very clever.  It knows the paper is white; so it tries to trick you into thinking the paper is white.

So what does white balance means in terms of digital photography?  The camera tries to cancel out the orange tint.   How does it do that?  It adds blue!  Take the following picture for example.  I took the picture outdoors in a cloudy day with white balance set to incandescent.  I did it because I wanted the sky to look blue (cause I know incandescent white balance will add blue tint);  however, what I didn’t anticipate is that the light from my flash was not orange enough (I added an orange film to the flash).  So.. bad picture, too blue!

Luckily, I shot the picture in RAW (native file format).  So I opened the picture, and use Nikon Capture’s picker tool and told the program her dress is white.  Voila!  She looks natural again!

Zandra