A few snaps of Jeff and Darren from a quick shoot last night. I never realized how much I need my new 70–200mm lens after getting a full-frame camera; 70mm is much too short, even in my small studio room.
It’s strange to see so much natural vignetting. I’m not sure if it’s the lens or the way the light falls off when spread across the background from one direction.
Aaron came over with Ryan for breakfast one morning, and it gave me a chance to use them as models to try some of the techniques I learned from Sid when I was in New Hampshire. I still had to do some work in Photoshop to keep the midpoint where I wanted, but it was still quite minimal compared to my work with colour lately. This type of portraiture is very different from what I normally do, where instead of using an out-of-focus background to make the subject stand out, I’m using the contrast of light.
I turned on Chicken Run to keep Ryan occupied while we ate, and Aaron kept getting distracted by it as much as he did. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if it was the son who took after the father, or vice versa.
I took these of Navid and Jess a little while back.
More recently, Navid called to let me know the childbirth went well, and now he has another adorable little half-Persian girl.
Rose is old enough to walk on her own now and give me kisses before she leaves.
Some portraits of Tatiana. As a person into voyeurism (more specifically, on the end being observed), she’s more comfortable with her clothes off than on. I love working with people who are comfortable with their bodies. You get total creative freedom, instead of the frustration of having to walk on eggshells, lest you offend a model’s sensibilities.
I’ve discovered that when doing nude photography, you need to open up the aperture so that a greater portion of the person is in focus than in conventional portraits. If you focus on only the eyes, you lose the nudity and it becomes a distraction. If you focus on nakedness, you lose the eyes and it becomes vulgar.
Photographing people with darker skin is a little different than capturing those with fairer skin. You don’t worry so much about the colour tones during shoot as after, when you’re post-processing the photos.
I also find that, in general, girls are natural posers. They’ll change positions on their own initiative and play with the camera, which is very different from guys, who will just stand there until you give them some sort of direction. Each has their own advantages, as I can feed off the creativity of a model who wants to try different things, but also work well with those who will be posing dolls for me.
Taking portraits of families is a lot harder than I expected. It’s not so much the amount of light and large depth-of-field required (although that does play a part), but the fact that there are so many things going on at once. Getting everyone to co-ordinate what they’re doing becomes exponentially difficult with every extra person. And if only one person blinks, the photo is ruined.
One of the biggest assets a photographer can have is a sense of humour. If you can make your model laugh, you lower their apprehensiveness, which brings down their guard and provides you with much more natural expressions. Not to mention the fact that it’s a pleasure to see someone smiling or laughing.
Still playing around with black-and-white tones. This time, I went with less contrast, so more of a low-key feel, not just in the overall scene but in the figures themselves. In doing so, the texture isn’t so blown-out as in my previous black-and-whites.
I love the dreamy look of high-key, but for more focus on facial features, I’m starting to turn to a greater range of light.
In return for modeling for some of my other projects, I agreed to give Agnes and Soph some portraits. Siblings are generally easy to work with. There’s a comforting familiarity that lets them act naturally together. To tell them apart, one simply has to observe how differently each acts in front of a camera.
There’s a tremendous bond between mother and daughter, something unmatched by fathers and sons, or even mixed-sex parental relationships. You can see it just from the way they interact.
As a male, I’ll probably never be able to fully understand, but being able to recognize it and knowing that such a wonderful thing still exists is enough to make me feel as if the world is in the right place.
A couple more pictures behind the cut.
Usually I don’t post this many pictures of one shoot of a single person because there’s often a lot of redundancy, but Paige has a thousand expressions that must be captured and shown to the world.
There’s a complexity in her face that betrays the layers and layers of her character. By turns ebullient, hopeful, playful, and uncertain — every frame is different. I feel like I could write an essay on her look alone.
Best viewed on large and on black, of course, so click the pictures. Commentary at full size.
If you gave me the hypothetical option of photographing anyone I wanted, I’d ask if it could be someone who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or another one of the 19th century Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron himself.
If I could choose someone living though, I’d choose Tiana.
The last time I took pictures of Tyler was at the bike park. He looks very different without his beard. I prefer with than without; it adds so much more personality.
Included is one for my body shot series.
A few portraits of Meghan. Her big eyes and waif-like figure give her something of an innocent look, while the dress and labret balances this out with a bit of an edge. Very appealing, in my books. Makes you wonder which part is more true of her.
A few portraits of Gosia. She’s a first-generation Canadian, her parents being immigrants from Poland. One can tell she has a very European look.
These were taken with the sun coming from behind because Gosia was squinting too much otherwise. I tried my flash as a fill-in to balance the brightness of the background, which helped increased saturation in the foreground. I love the colours in these shots, they’re so dreamy.
Another addition to my body shot series. Gosia’s a competitive volleyball player, so she has awesome abs (not to mention killer curves).
A lot of guys are somewhat blinded by Gosia’s beautiful big eyes and curvy figure; they’re don’t realize that she’s quite a strong, intelligent person with a good head on her shoulders. The idea of these shots was to cover up part of her face, not through the framing of the picture, but using objects to help the viewer see past her physical beauty.
Okay, okay, I admit it, I bought more camera gear. This time it was a flash, an umbrella, and a combination stand to hold the two. The flash is a Canon 580EX II, the most important features being:
I was able to test it out the rig on Andrew and Alex, who happened to be in town that weekend. Out of all my friends and acquaintances, I’ve known Andrew and Alex the longest, since elementary school. We got to hang out for a night and catch up before they had to take off. I can still tell them apart from face and voice, although it got quite a bit harder.
It was a good practice in doing portraits of two people, and figuring out how varied the same scene can look with the main light source at different positions. Overall, I’m very pleased with how they turned out.
