Yes, it has been a long while since I posted here! Although I didn’t shoot a lot this past year, it wasn’t a complete photographic drought as I worked on a large project with a friend last fall which gave me a lot of experience (perhaps more on that in a future post) and did some shots for a friend-of-a-friend musician who needed to promote his new T-shirts (I’ll try to get a short post on that up soon). I do admit it has been slow though, but the good news is that I have been getting fired back up about shooting and just recently bought myself some new lights!

I purchased the Hensel Porty Premium Kit with an extra head which will give me a lot more flexibility and allow me to experiment with some of the fashion, lifestyle, portraiture stuff that I want to get more into. So I plan on organizing and doing more photo shoots in the near future. In fact, I already have a couple of images to share from my first shoot with my new lights!

Last Saturday I took photos of a local singer, Alex Rajaofera, who contacted me through Model Mayhem(getting on that site has been great for finding opportunities) to see if I wanted to do some promotional shots for her. Well, as you can see, I did. The shoot went well and I may end up doing a shoot for her friend too!

Anyway, I’m excited about my new lights and putting together shoots, so I will do my best to keep posting updates on my photographic adventures here. Till next time!

Tai

A few weeks ago my friend Erin and I spent a Sunday afternoon shooting some photos. Here she is alongside a cool wall in Mission Beach:

It was overcast which made for great soft lighting without any equipment. I should have broken out the reflectors and brought along an assistant though.

Thanks Erin!

Tai

On Saturday I attended a Julia Dean Workshop titled Crafting the Portrait. The instructor was Mark Edward Harris, an accomplished photographer whos work has appeared in publications such as Life, Harper’s Bazaar, and Playboy. The class was very small, just four students, the instructor, and an assistant. After some classroom time in the morning and a short while doing portraits of each other outside, we were sent off to do “environmental portraits” of whomever we could find in downtown Oceanside. An environmental portrait is a portrait in which the subject is shown in their “natural” environment to show something about their life. I was not very happy with my environmental portrait so I will not post any here, but some other students made some great ones which was nice to see. I’d like to try some of those again soon.

That afternoon was our time to work with the model, and her friend who ended up doing some modeling for us as well (along with her Chihuahua, Batman). This was fun, and I am happy with what I was able to capture in the few frames I took (a dozen or less of each of these setups). For this first shot, an intentionally overexposed split-tone, I had a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve, having nabbed the idea from my folder of “inspiration” images.

It was great to be able to have an idea in my head and be able to execute against it, successfully and with little trouble. Having lots of equipment, assistants, and an instructor at hand don’t hurt of course, but I think I can also do this same shot with what I have at my disposal at home. This next shot is with a lighting setup that I had not played with before.
High and to the left is a grid spot light illuminating the model, and off to the left of the red background is another focused light, creating the isolated bright red area. This creates a much more dramatic image than the big soft boxes, of course. I had her put on the glasses because I think they make the photo.

If I had more time I would have worked this setup more to get an image that I really like, but I’m happy with what I got given the time constraint. Overall, the workshop was valuable. I picked up a few more nuggest of information, met some great people, and perhaps most importantly it inspired me to really start playing with my lights more and creating new images.

This is going to be fun :)

Tai