Photo 35: Baby Kate

Baby Kate will be having her Baptism this coming weekend! But before that, she got her pictorial session :)

Oh yes, she is just irresistibly cute and adorable! :D
Je and I had a really fun time taking photos of Kate. We tried experimenting a little bit with different shots this time :)

Here are a few more pictures :)

Photo 34: My PS3 Buddy

Ok, I'm about 3 entries behind schedule! I hate to admit it, but I think I'm on a slump...
No current projects, no fascinating subjects, no beautiful models, or no interesting concepts to shoot...

Perfect!! It's during these times that I have to push myself and my creativity to come up with new ideas. It's the perfect opportunity for me to learn something new.

I sat back and thought to myself... What do I need to improve more in my photography stuff?
I haven't been shooting much black and white pics, and I haven't been doing a lot of product shots...

So I decided to challenge myself by taking a photo of some mundane item and make it look artistic in black and white.

Surprisingly, the lighting concepts that I do for model shoots are the same lighting concepts I use for product shots. For this photo, I had two kicker lights on the sides to add separation and a key light smack in the middle as the main light. The most important aspect of this set-up? It was probably the setting up behind the scenes that I did before the actual shoot... The controller was really dirty with libag so I had to clean it with alcohol and cotton buds :D

This is actually fun... I think I'll experiment some more and I think I can still do more improvements...

Photo 33: A Different Kind of Couple Pic

Last year I was asked by Kristell Lim to take photos of her doing cosplay and we tried entering a photo contest with this entry. We didn't win but I think we got to top something because the photo got included in the album cover (they made a compilation of all the top picks).

A year later we're back, doing another cosplay shoot, which we'll be entering in the contest again :D

I'm actually pumped about this contest because we're supposed to submit photos that are NOT edited. It fits my style perfectly because I only do minimal editing for most of my photos.

This is Kristell and Adi as Megurine Luka and Hiyama Kiyoteru from Vocaloid.

It was sort of like a prenup pictorial session so I felt right at home directing the shots :D

And here's Hatsune Miku also from Vocaloid :)

Wish us luck! Hope we win this time :D

View the rest of the photos through this link.

Photo 32: Soleil

Hehe... I'm a tad bit late with my weekly project... I've been sick with tamaritis and I actually already have a couple of photos ready for upload but just haven't done so. I've been on bakasyon mode lately and so I took a little break from my blog :D

Anyway, I'm back! And I'm starting off with a photoshoot I did for an upcoming shoe brand.

I did a photoshoot for Soleil to model their shoes. It was a nice afternoon outside so almost all the shots were done with ambient light.
Before I got into shooting events, I got interested in Photography because of portraits, so doing a model shoot felt really comfortable for me :D

Here are a couple more shots from the session :)

Photo 31: Ezekiel

One of the hardest shoots to do is of babies. Obviously because you have very little control over their mood swings. They can be happy and cheerful one moment, and the very next second just before you click on the shutter, they're crying... well, like babies!

Having said that... One of the most gratifying shoots to do... is also of babies! :D

C'mon, they are just the cutest!! :D You just need a little patience and a bit of luck, and when you get that perfect moment, it's gold!

Here's Ezekiel for his baby photoshoot before his Christening :)

And here are few more teasers before I release the rest of the adorable baby Ezekiel pics :D

Photo 30: Wet and (and not so) Wild!

Waking up to a lazy rainy morning gave me an idea to redo my Photo 8. With my brother still asleep, I went to my DIY buddy, Danny Boy.

I have a hunch that the most common question that I'll be getting with this shot is "how fast was your shutter speed?"

It was 10 seconds :)

Yep you read it right! How did that happen??
Instead of using the shutter to freeze the moment, I used flashes instead. The speed of light is faster than the fastest shutter speed available!

So can I share my set-up for this shot? Of course I can... BUT where's the fun in that?? :D
I researched this stuff on my own and I learned by doing the experiments myself! So you should too :)

I'll help out though by at least sharing the key elements :)
To get background information, I researched on High Speed Photography. For the actual shot, I had a key light, kicker lights, remote trigger for the lights, and a water gun.

So there you have it. Good luck if you decide to try it out yourself :)

Oh and here's a failed attempt. I aimed too low and Danny Boy evaded the shot :D

Photo 29.5: Post Runway Shoot

My previous entry was awesome (Jason Magbanua!! Hell yeah!!!), but I didn’t get to feature any lighting techniques at all… So when our company had a Fashion Show event, I brought my camera to work in case I would get a chance to take pictures. Too bad the event was too early for my shift so I didn’t get to take photos during the actual event.

I’ve actually already worked with one of the models before (Kristell Lim), so when she asked if I’d like to take some portraits after the show, I quickly agreed :)

This was an impromptu shoot in one of our conference rooms. I’m really pleased with the makeshift set-up that I came up with so I’ll take some time in explaining what I did :D

This is how the impromptu set-up looked like behind the camera. Not so glamorous, no? :D

The key light was my speedlight pointed at the wall and then gobo’d to keep the light from spilling into the subject. The makeshift gobo was a file binder :D  Pointing the speedlight to the wall and using a gobo were very important in achieving this shot for these reasons:

     1. How do you make light soft? By having a bigger light source. When the light bounced from the wall, the entire wall became illuminated and it became the huge light source. If I pointed the speedlight directly to the subject instead, then the size of the light source would have been limited to the surface area of the flash head, which is just roughly the size of a clenched fist and a lot smaller than the wall.
     2. Gobos constrict the light and keep unwanted light from getting everywhere. Here are test shots I did without, and then with the gobo. Who would have thought that such a big difference can be achieved with a file binder and a book :D (Oh and thanks to Randell for helping me set-up, being the test subject, and for lending me his speedlight, which was used as the background light)

A second speedlight was pointed at the back to wash out the background and also serve as kicker light. It was also gobo’d with a black book.

Later on during the shoot, we had some trouble syncing the second speedlight. So I just turned it off and it became a 1-light set-up. So for some of the photos, there were 2 lights, and for the rest, there was only 1 light.

I asked the other models if they’d like to get their photos taken as well, and they agreed! So here are some of the other shots I did:

Kristell

Kam

 

Dianne

Jed

Sab

Click on my FB Album to view more pictures :)