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.
Puddles was the sole survivor of a litter of puppies left in the cold of Canadian winter, because the owner didn’t want to keep them. He stayed alive by burying himself under his mothers body to stay warm. At a couple weeks old he was taken to his new and permanent home, where he’s lived for over 13 years.
Puddles is currently suffering from allergies (he’s chewed through his fur), arthritis, and severe diabetes. He can’t even make it up the front steps without the momentum of a run. Once a healthy 110 pound dog, he now weighs 88lbs.
I was commissioned to take some pictures of him with the kids before he passes.
In return, I was offered dinner; a savoury pasta with tiger shrimp and lemon zest, along with apple crisp for dessert. All made from scratch.
This was a small exercise in shooting RAW (used for about half the shots). It’s great to not worry about white balance and to have an extra stop exposure adjustment, but I still find that getting the processing right is a bit tricky.
I asked Rockstar Jeff, an old source of envy, if I could take a few portraits of him.
Jeff’s very photogenic, but he doesn’t agree. I’m 75% prep and 25% bad-ass, whereas he’s 75% bad-ass and 25% prep. Sometimes we joke about trading styles because there’s a mix in each of us, and we always like where the other ones goes with it. The truth of the matter is that I could never pull off his style. Anyone can do prep, but he’s got the right face, the right clothes, the right attitude for hardcore.
This was his hit single.
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He’s the guitarist and screamer. The band broke up, but he’s currently exploring other musical opportunities. It’s interesting to hear his other projects; he’s always the frontman, but he adjusts his singing style to the band while adding his own edge.
Tattoos:
Stars on wrist
This was a mutual tattoo done with a friend (his “right hand” person), which is why there are two of them. His friend has the same tattoos on her wrist.
Crows on right arm
As the crow is the universal symbol of bad luck, Jeff got each crow to remind him of a hard time in his life. Each one of them signify a moment. There’s one red one with a nail going through it, as a symbol that his bad luck is hopefully behind him (but he says it isn’t yet).
Daisy on right arm
The daisy is his mom’s flower. It’s not really wilted or broken (which is what I thought at first), it’s simply missing petals. He got this at a time when he was really angry at her, which is why it’s red. He had drawn two years earlier, but only decided to get it inked when she kicked him out of the house, to remind him of the hard love of family.
Stars on elbows
There’s actually one larger star on each elbow, with the initials of people coming out of them. They’re the first tattoos he ever got, to remind him of the tough lessons that he’s gone through with or from these people.
Heart on chest
This one was inspired by his mom. He was making making some foolish decisions around 18, and his mom reminded him that he should be happy with himself when he looks in the mirror, that there should be no hiding from the truth, and he should always be true to himself.
The word “truth” is surrounded by periods to emphasize that it’s a strong fact in itself. The word “self” doesn’t start with a period because the heart is a part of the sentence.
The only change he would make is to have it drawn backwards, so he could read it when he looks in the mirror.
