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Last month I had the pleasure of working with Ryan Heward on expanding his portfolio. We shot for two days, in the heat, and created a lot of killer shots. These are a few of my favorites from the session.
Watch for Ryan’s work in the future. We wish him luck in his career!
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UPDATE: Congratulations to Ryan who just got signed with FORD/Robert Black Agency!
Back around the beginning of the year, a friend of mine introduced me to the Editor of Revista Amiga. Introduced in person, I should say… we all happened to be at the same nightclub that evening. Her and I had exchanged messages a few times previously about setting up a shoot for the magazine. A week and a half before my April trip to Hermosillo, we started chatting about setting up the shoot… and managed to figure out most of the details before I arrived in town.
The day, for me, started at 3am and a 5.5 hour drive from Tempe to Hermosillo. Once in town, I met up with Ana from Revista Amiga, and Alejandro Quintana, my assistant for the shoot. We headed over to Luz Maria Salon to join up with Alejandro Rodriguez of AR Agencia and our models for the shoot, Mayra Valerio and Michelle Montenegro, who were already in the middle of hair and makeup. A short stop at the boutique to select the clothing for the shoot and we were off to our shoot location, Blue Lounge, inside of Grill Station.
It was a long, hot, tiring day, but we all had a lot of fun and I enjoyed every minute of it. Plus, we got some killer photos. Check out the behind the scenes video from the shoot below. For more behind the scenes and updates, Become a Fan on Facebook!
During my trip to Hermosillo in February, I met up with model Alejandra Castillo Benavides for a shoot. We had been working on a concept for my January visit, though due to scheduling that never happened. This time though, we had an amazing location to work with, El Casino del Diablo, thanks to a suggestion by my friend Teresita.
We arrived on location and it was beyond my expectations. We initially had a bit of trouble actually getting past the gates, though once in, everything flowed quite smoothly. We walked the location, picking out our setups. Far in the back, up on top of the roof, I found my first setup. It was definitely my “IT” spot for this session and I knew it when I saw it. Up on the roof were these concrete benches that looked like they belonged at a bus stop rather than a rooftop, surrounded with debris and half dead shrubbery. We setup shop here and got things started.
Next up was the room pretty much directly below where we first setup. It was huge and empty with none of the windows intact and a ton of graffiti. I liked the way my test shots were turning out, using only the natural light to illuminate the room. I added a little pop of light for Alejandra and we were set.
The last setup of the day came together rather organically. Alejandra had one more outfit she wanted to shoot… and I had seen this square pattern from behind old tiles in a few rooms that I was liking. The rooms with the pattern I liked had so far been too small for what I wanted to shoot. We looked around the location a bit more and found another room with the pattern that was much larger and had some green graffiti that tied in well with her outfit.
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This past month we took a trip to Hermosillo, Sonora for an extended weekend. It had been a few months since I had last been there. The weekend was mostly a vacation of sandboarding, clubs and the best fish tacos on the planet… but I did get some shooting in while I was there.
For this shoot I met up at the Centro Cultural Musas with my friend and photographer Fidel and model Anna Rojo. Anna modeled for the calendar we shot back in early 2009, though we were in Puerto Penasco different weekends and hadn’t crossed paths. This shoot was worth the wait. Anna was a pleasure to work with. We had a great time and created some solid photos. Here are some of my favorites from the shoot.
A trip is planned before the end of the month and another is in the works for February. Watch for more photos from my sessions in Mexico.
Aspiring Arizona model Alex Lasheen contacted me with an interest to update his portfolio with some lifestyle/commercial fashion type photography. After some hair and makeup, we met up just outside the entrance to Lake Pleasant. My favorite photos from our session were near the end when we wandered out into the marina area of the lake. The photo above is one of my favorites from this portion of our shoot.
This past month my good friend Aaron Matthew and I have started working on updating his portfolio. For this session I was going for a classy suit look, but with a bit of an edge. We went with a single outfit and changed it up with a variety of lighting techniques.
The initial concept was to shoot inside an elevator, so we took a trip to downtown Phoenix. After finding our elevator, we quickly learned it wanted to have nothing to do with us propping it open. Instead we timed this whole setup in the amount of time it would stay open from pressing the button. This was the only setup that used additional lighting. I attached a bare speedlight to the staircase behind the camera with a justin clamp to bring some hard light into this shaded area.
For the rest of our setups I worked with natural light, ranging from setups in the shade, sun flares and shadows cast by nearby objects. My new EF 50mm f/1.4 I purchased has been working amazing for shooting into the sun to get flares. It’ll allow me to virtually shoot straight into the sun.
After what was to be our last setup, we busted out a few crazier concepts on the way back to the car. The shoot is never over until the memory card gets plugged into my MacBook.
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with Laura, a model from SIM Agency. Our shoot ended up being a bit of a road trip and the first stop was to meet up with Lorri Mitchell for some stellar makeup. Once the makeup was complete, we took a brief pitstop for some caffeine and headed up north in search of some tall grass for our shoot. What we found was visually what I had in mind, but it came with the added bonus of being sharp, scratchy and laced with thorns. Good times! Even so, we got the look I was going for.
To get more information on the lighting setup used in this shoot, check out my previous post Balancing Flash with Afternoon Sunlight.
I had the opportunity to meet up with Madeline a few weeks ago and spend the afternoon shooting with her. I’ve wanted to do another shoot in downtown Phoenix for a while, but hadn’t had the opportunity to now, so we jumped on it. We had a style we were going for, but no specifics planned, we just let it organically unfold as it wanted to. We headed downtown, walked around a bit, got kicked out of this beautiful space between some buildings, then happened across this location. This location had great shade, good architectural lines and a bright wall behind me to bounce light back onto Madeline. This setup ended up being my favorite, these are a couple of the resulting shots.
I recently had the pleasure of shooting with Foot Klan again. Always a good time. This shoot was setup by my good friend Matthew Dutile. Hip hop dancing, photography, good friends and a sunset. That’s an invite you can’t pass up.
As the dancers started to roll in, we setup for some individual portraits rooftop and in the stairwell. For my portraits in the stairwell, I wanted something a bit urban and gritty. I setup in one of the areas that had strong natural back lighting and threw in a small strobe right up against the wall opposite of the sun.
As the sun started to set we headed back topside out to the middle of the parking ramp and let the dancers take over. We set them up with some dramatic back lighting and they put on a great show. I had the opportunity to practice with Foot Klan for a few months a couple of years ago, it was a lot of fun, but needless to say, I’ll leave the dancing to them and stay behind the camera.
Over Labor Day weekend I took a 4-day trip to Hermosillo, Sonora to visit Jazmin Riley before she started her semester at college. Since this was a social visit and not specifically a photography trip, I didn’t want to pack the car full of lighting gear. This trip, I specifically took only my camera bag.
As is typical for us, Jazmin and I are completely incapable of not shooting. There is a broke-down building she’s been driving by every day that casts shadows she’s wanted to work with. This was the first setup we did at the location. We intended to do more, but the heat started to melt the model. We selected a corner that had shadows she liked and was surrounded by other brightly lit walls that provided plenty of bounced light. The location essentially lit itself.
Because of the heat outside, we decided to do the next setup completely inside the house. To get our bright white glow in the background, we used a window that had a white translucent material covering it, with the sun beating down just outside. To achieve the front lighting, we used the overhead lights on the ceiling fan, accompanied with a lamp positioned up close with the shade removed. The indoor lighting was a bit low, but that allowed for the light from the window to wrap around Jazmin to provide the glow I was looking for.
