Assistance on Hand....

December 22, 2015

This post is long over due. Back during the summer I was helping out fellow photog Dedan Blackmon with a shoot Downtown with his model Te'Asia. We shoot along the boat docks along Chene Park and Dequindre Cut. All of this was before helping out on another shoot with Alex for international singer Nina Bradlin. This was also the same day when I met the inline skater Chyna as well. As this a short one here are a few pics from the shoot. Check out Dedan's photography page on Facebook.

***************************************************UPDATE*************************************************

Since these were taken Dedan have grown tremendously and has gotten better with his lighting. In the mean time has be put on restriction til further notice by photographer Keith Dixon.

Playing in Water

December 16, 2015

Today, I took a different approach to a challenge that was posted the Photowalk:Michigan facebook page. The theme was water, so instead of you typical old shoots of what I already did with beaches, lakes, and rivers. I decided to do something different.

What I decided to do was, try my hand at capturing splashes. As this was my first time attempting this as I seen maybe two videos last year and they had more lights than I did. For the setup I used an Alien Bee AB800 and a Yungnuo 480 speedlight. Both lights had a grid on them the alien bee had a 10 degree and the speedlight had an 30 degree grid I believe.

Without any true direction, I used an orange to help create the splashes. I tried to use different positions with the camera. Two positions was in front of the tank and one was directly above the tank. At that position there was a lot water splashes that went directly towards the lens. In the end I was happy with the outcome of the end results.

Shot directly from above - orange is visible in shot

Just like any first attempt at doing something for the first time, there is always a trail and error phase. With this there was plenty of it, as I had to position and balance out the lights as they were two different sources. Just trying to find the right angles. One last thing that I have to remember because I am working with water because I was working right next to an outlet things could have gotten disastrous. Next time I know to move the tank away from the wall and all outlets. I can't wait to try this again on a larger scale or with color water or paint.

Jazz - Delreo Collab

December 15, 2015

Sunday I was invite by Janita of Del Reo Imaging to her shoot baby shoot then lead into her shoot with her cousin Jazz, who is aspiring to be a model. After the baby shoot it was time to work with Jazz. As Jazz has never really modeled before, she needed a lot of direction. I don't mind at all because it also helped me with giving direction. It was a fun shoot. Jazz came with a variety of clothes so we had different looks happen.

After a while we took it outside to the streets, in the first location it didn't like the lighting. I was using the street light, but the street light was not providing the look I was going for. Eventually, I decided to use the flood light of the house which fair a tab bit better, but I still was not liking the situation. So the last spot we moved to was the Purple Rose right across the street from us. This actually a very cool spot with the purple wall, it stood out and added something different to the shots.

Although this was a fun shoot, I only liked 10-15% of the final images. There were some unforeseen elements that ruined the shoots and a few out of focus shots that were actually my faves. With that, I would definitely want to do a redo of this shoot. I was not satisfied with this shoot.