Assassin Jacqui: A Black and White Series
models
Maxine’s Curves.
Anything can and will go wrong on a shoot, it happens and it happens to the best of us. On a recent shoot with Maxine things “went wrong” in that we couldn’t find the intended location, the area we were in had terrible weather and we were losing light pretty fast. When things like this happen it’s important to keep the spirit up and roll with the punches. With the initial idea being scrapped we drove down to Old Town Albuquerque to try and make up for a shoot that didn’t happen and the results were well worth it.
In the car ride (that got extended) Maxine, my assistant/girlfriend, and I had conversations about shooting women with curves (as Maxine obviously does) and how to get the best images out of it and we specifically talked about how it’s not hard to get great images with curvy models. Essentially when working with curvier models you don’t want to hide the curves, you want to highlight them and use them to your advantage. Curves can be incredibly flattering and work very well aesthetically but in order for get them to work you need to know how to pose the model. Posing is important for any model, it’s the basis of modeling in general and every model is different in what works but I’ve noticed that curvier models are very specific. You need to know where their curves are, where they look the most flattering and extend those areas out so that they get more of the attention than anything else.
Shooting curvier models is a lot of fun. It’s not nearly as challenging as you would think it would be and to be honest is more visually interesting to look at. If you want to get better at directing and posing I would recommend working with more models with curve because it makes you more attentive to what you are doing with your directions.
On location with Maxine… In a Pool
It’s very easy to get Cabin Fever when shooting in studio often with great frequency. It almost feels like my last couple of shoots have been strictly studio on account of scheduling purposes. Studio comes with like a lot of benefits such as controllable lighting, minimal distractions and a comfortable space to interact with your subjects. But nothing really quite compares to the visual interest created by an on location shoot. Maxine reached out to me having a very solid concept in mind for a futuristic pool shoot with the location already set up. Needless to say I was blown away by the location itself. The owner of the property showed great hospitality and even enthusiasm for the shoot we were doing. The location was nothing short of beautiful with excellent scenery, an incredible pool and perfect natural lighting once we hit golden hour.
Maxine as a model was a thrill to work with. The thing that made her so great to shoot with was her ability to communicate. She was able to tell me exactly what she wanted out of the shoot and I was able to give her direction and explain what I was doing without any problem. When there is a good amount of chemistry between photographer and subject it goes a long way in getting the best results out of a shoot.
Though I have been spending more and more time in studio shooting in that environment I still mostly think of myself as an on location shooter. I enjoy working with the natural light and the environment around me to get the best possible results so it was amazing to be able to take advantage of a stellar location and work with an incredibly bright model.
The Pinata Shoot
Collaboration is a very important aspect of creativity and it is almost unavoidable if you work in portraiture. Fellow photographer and over all enjoyable human being David Cervantes invited me out to a large themed shoot involving numbers models and photographers at a local pinata shop. It was a fairly hectic environment and experience of all individuals varied. However it was refreshing to be able to put myself in a mentor role helping new models and photographers understand the process that goes into making stunning images.
Shooting with New Models: Ashley Perry.
More often than not people always tell you that it’s all about networking when it comes to getting jobs and people finding your work and that’s exactly what happened this weekend when I helped Ashley Perry start her modeling portfolio.
Ashley was referred to me by someone I did a shoot with a month prior and since she just got into a modeling agency, she needed to get some portfolio images put together. All the photographers her agency refereed her to were very expensive so I cut her a deal.
Working with a new model is always an interesting experience and you never quite know what to expect. Sometimes they can be a bit timid or shy especially around the camera. However, Ashley didn’t have any of these problems; she was very comfortable around the camera, was able to give me different looks and took direction extremely well.
One of the biggest factors in any shoot is the weather during the shoot. The photography gods very gracious in giving light overcast, no wind and moderately warm temperatures giving me everything I needed to just do my thing and shoot. There was one point where the sun was piercing through that clouds but it was at golden hour making for some excellent light.
For this shoot I relied heavily on my 85mm 1.8g lens for most of the shots. I played around with using the 28mm and the 50mm but everything always comes back to my work horse lens. I shot exclusively at f2.8 making sure I got enough sharpness and detail out of Ashley while still getting nice Bokeh (blur) in the background.
As far as post processing goes I kept things very simple. I tried to bring in as much contrast and color as I could while still keeping things natural. I ran in to some issues with Ashley’s tan skin but I normally get around that by bringing in some vibrancy but pulling down the saturation. Other than that I did some spot correcting, but nothing super drastic. When I edit my portraits I try to keep things subtle while at the same time making things pop.
Over all it was an extremely fun shoot and I’m looking forward to working with Ashley in the future.
Craziest Photography Weekend Ever.
This last weekend I had one of the most hectic weekends photography wise that I’ve ever had to endure. To give a little context to this story we have to go over why I was shooting. My tattoo artist had came to me earlier in the month of October asking if I would do photos for a costume contest he was hosting asking people (females particularly) to submit photos that he would do sketches of, and was offering free ink and piercings to the best ones. Being that many of the submissions were mainly going to be iphone selfies he wanted to contract a guy who could do quality photos and since he had seen my work he offered to do some free ink in return for my services. I’d done other shoots in previous weeks but this weekend is where it got crazy.; luckily a good friend of mine had a warehouse space that she was willing to loan out in return for some photos of herself.
Francesca Hone in catsuit. The owner of the warehouse that let me borrow the space.
Normally I would like to do photos at more candid locations to give a different graphic quality to the images- however some of the girls outfits weren’t necessarily appropriate to have out in public. For example one of the girls came dressed as a Playboy Bunny. Not quite something you want to be wearing downtown in the middle of the afternoon.
She was a bit frosty in the personality coming into it but she had been on camera before and so she knew how to do simple posing. The bunny ears proved to be a bit problematic when it came to compositions but over all I think I did a good job with them.
The second girl on Friday arguably had the more creative outfit. She had put together a peacock costume that was extraordinarily colorful and extravagant which opened up a lot of fun opportunities for what I could do in Lightroom when I started editing.
Other than the two girls that came in that day I also did a shoot with Francesca’s friend Monica who never been on camera before, but her significant other was going out of town and wanted some nice photos to remember her by.
Being that she had never done photos before it was nice having Francesca there to direct. Because god knows that directing models is not my strong suit.
So upon wrapping up the busy Friday I just went back to my place and dumped all the Raw files off the card so I could get editing in Lightroom. I like to get all my editing done very quickly and efficiently. It’s something I picked up in photojournalism. Get em’ in, get em’ toned and get em’ out.
On Saturday my friend Tyler (Who is one of the awful people responsible for me being a photographer) asked me to do some promo pictures for her cosplay group. I of course obliged and went with her up to a village in Placitas by a church to get some shots of her in her cute witch outfit.
Tyler is arguably my favorite person to work with. She’ll never admit it but her photos always come out amazing and she is incredibly good on camera. Also what she does with putting costumes together is nothing short of mind blowing. Once again got them done got home and got editing. I’m gaining a reputation of having incredibly quick turn around times on my work.
Now Sunday is when shit got real. Random shoots kept coming up and I didn’t know what to do or where I was going to take them but luckily Francesca came to the rescue. Now I originally didn’t want to ask her to use her space again mainly because I didn’t want her to feel like I was abusing her. But she had messaged me saying that she was having a photographer with a full lighting set up come in and do photos of her and some other girls who have never done modeling before and asked if I would tag along I said of course and asked if I could use the opportunity to get the other girl who needed photos done in on the same day.
Now before I did that I had already scheduled a shoot earlier that morning with a girl dressed as Rosie the Riveter. I took her down to the abandoned rail yard out in Albuquerque. If you ever look up photographers from Albuquerque you know the one. The shoot was very short and sweet. I didn’t want to spend too much time in a condemned building but the location did offer a lot of personality.
The later shoot at the warehouse where things got a little intimidating. Being that the other photographer that Francesca had over had a more complicated set up it didn’t give me a whole lot of room to work with. Especially when you consider that I shoot with prime lenses. None the less, it was kind of fun to get play with studio lighting and professional flashes. Granted flashes are a bit overwhelming at times but it gave me a few new challenges that I was happy to overcome.
The first girl Francesca had was quite the firecracker. She had a lot of energy and even though she had never done photos before she took direction very well and wasn’t afraid to play around.
Now when the last of the girls who did photos for my tattoo artist came in things got a little more difficult to work with. She was very stiff and didn’t emote very well. It was really just one of those situations where we just had to persist till she warmed up and we could get something out of her. Not every model is going to be easy to work with but you do what you can.
However the last of Francescas friends didn’t have this problem. In fact she had a very warm smile as was able to take direction quite well and it resulted in some very impressive photos.
This was indeed a crazy weekend of photography but it was a great experience and I got to deal with a handful of new and sometimes frustrating situations that photographers have to deal with all in the course of one weekend. That being said, I could use a vacation.
TCK-Media 
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