backstage access
Monday October 12, 2009
for this session of dapper, we wanted to give our viewers a peek behind the scenes of a typical shoot, albeit in a stylized manner.
many thanks to my 2 wonderful stylists for all the hard work, all the beautiful models who have graced our shoots and all who have helped in one way or another through the year. been hell of a journey.
to view the rest of my lifestyle/fashion portfolio, click here.
freni promo shoot + dinner
Thursday July 2, 2009
l-r: shi hui, tze, lide, walter, liz. check out the details and the props!
did a really fun photoshoot for some friends a couple of days ago to make some pictures to promote their group in the upcoming wkwsci orientation camp next week. it was a nice get-together at sarah’s place (with the super cool old-world-looking basmement!) for dinner followed by the shoot.
since the theme of this year’s camp has a mafia-ish feel to it, we wanted to do something in the same grain – thus the choices of costumes and location that that you see. before i move into the technical stuff, just want to thank yudi for being an awesome assistant (always brings great insights and ideas to the shoots), sarah for being a wonderful host and supplying the food and location, and of course, the cast – tze, lide, shi hui and walter for being so fun and sporting and a pleasure to work with.
for the first photo on top, we had a speedlight close to camera right set to bounce light off the white ceiling for general fill. since there were a couple of available light sources (the lamp lighting shi hui and a spotlight on the ceiling lighting liz), we wanted to incorporate those into the setup and achieved that by setting a slower shutter speed to allow them to “burn in”. the main light was a CTO-gelled (for warmth) speedlight with omnibounce attached and pointed straight down from the ceiling to simulate a bare bulb. we flagged the side pointed at the wall to minimise ugly specular highlights from forming.
since the lamp was rather strong, there was a noticeable light falloff from left to right before we corrected that with a speedlight (low and right of camera) fired into a relector to match the brightness of the left. i then had to do quite a bit of selective colour-correction in photoshop to match the different colour temperatures of the various light sources.
for the set of images that you see above, we set up a speedlight bounced off a reflective umbrella right of the lamp, high and aimed at the subject to make it seem as though the lamp was actually the light source (it would have been too harsh a light if we were to use it). we had a reflector out of frame on the left to lift the shadows a little. that was it, simple setup.
i then wanted to try a low-key portrait with a warm light as the main and a cool light as the kicker. turned the camera’s white balance setting to tungsten to get a bluish tone (for the kicker light) and gelling the main light orange for the warmth. the shutter speed was set near maximum sync-speed to remove all the ambient light (turning the background pure black). 2 light sources for this – a speedlight, gelled orange, bounced off a reflective umbrella right and just out of frame and another speedlight grid-spotted to control the spill, left of frame. got the following:
for the fun of it, i also made a “movie poster” version by combining the 5 pictures above in photoshop and bumping up the contrast and stripping a bit of the colour for the edgy look.
and of course, i had to get my portrait of sarah. another one for the collection!
thanks for reading! hope this was informative.
for more posts on my photography, click here.
the birthday present
Monday April 6, 2009
since i put in so much effort in wrapping sarah’s present and making the card, i thought, why not do a still-life shoot of them? could be an excellent pictorial record after the wrapping paper gets torn to bits. it did get torn to bits. i hope the card is fine.
here is the set-up for the first picture:
main light used was a sb-800 through an umbrella with removable backing half removed to control spill of light. grid spotted canon 430ex gelled blue to create the “halo” of blue as well as light the background. the 430ex was powered 1 – 1.5 stops over the main light.
gift was sitting on a piece of black construction paper with a white corrugated board as the background. both these items just happened to be lying around.
guess what was used to prop the background up?
the set-up for the second shot just required a quick switch-around:
main light in pretty much the same position, just that it was shifted off a bit to the left. silver reflector on camera right for fill. what you don’t see in this frame is the position of the backlight. here it is:
same grid-spotted canon 430ex for highly-directional light. a gold gel was used for the final picture instead of the blue as seen in the picture above. i was experimenting with the colours. the 430ex was powered 1 – 1.5 stops over the main light.
photos were then touched up a little in photoshop.
there you have it – simple strobist 2 light setup that you can also do in the comfort of your bedroom.
for more posts on photography, click here.
urban disguise
Monday March 9, 2009
in this edition of dapper, we wanted to do a product shoot but with a difference. instead of going the straightforward route and shooting the bags and shoes against a plain seamless, we wanted to shoot in an environment and in a style that would reveal and enhance their “character”. this would be like the conceptual environmental portrait – albeit of shoes and bags.
for the location we wanted a place with a really gritty and urban flavour. it just so happened that i was on the 179 heaaded to school when i spotted the skate park (with glorious graffiti) just right outside ntu. beats going all the way to the skate park in town where we would in all probability be harassed. besides, shooting near school meant that we would not have to lug gear and the products around.
we started setting up and shooting just before sunset. wanted to see if we could use the dying ambient light but then decided to kill the ambient light as it revealed too much unwanted details in the background (hdb blocks, cars, etc.) so we waited till dark before actually shooting.
the lighting setup was similar for both pictures. a flash against a bounce umbrella to fill the foreground, 3 grip-spotted/snooted falshes to light each of the shoes/bag combo. wanted to retain the hardness of the light give the photos a harsh, edgy look so no diffusers were used.
note that the bmx bike and the ramps in the background were lit with a flashed zoomed out to 105mm and shot on a separate frame, which was then composited with the shot of the foreground to form the above image. i had my camera locked down on a tripod to maintain the same field/angle of view.
likewise, the skater in this shot was lit separately as above. many thanks to him. he was enjoying a sandwich or something when i approached him to ask him to “model”. thankfully, i got him in the right place on the first attempt. otherwise i might be recovering from a skateboard-inflicted head injury now.
other than to form the composites, the photos also had their contrast and colours adjsuted in photoshop to bring out the grittiness and the textures of the graffiti. i also overlaid some additional texture to complete the grunge look.
as usual, many thanks to my dear stylists carina and audrey. couldn’t have done this without you girls. special thanks to ahmad and yudi for assisting and supplying some of the gear. thanks a lot guys.
for more posts on photography, click here.
art of war
Monday February 16, 2009
above is the final layout for the current installment of “dapper”. for readers who do not know what that is, it is basically the fashion spread that i shoot for the nanyang chronicle, a student-run campus newspaper that i am currently also working on as one of the photo editors. click here for a larger version of the page.
below are the 6 shots that went into this issue. note that the black backgrounds in all the 6 photos are not the original backgrounds. they were actually inserted after i etched out the 6 characters for the layout itself. the original backgrounds were quite bad even though we shot in a studio, largely because the backdrops available were not big enough that i could shoot full-body photos at a variety of angles without getting the rest of the wall and the pulleys for the backdrops in.
a word of advice to fellow photographers, if you ever intend to replace the background of your images during the post-process, shoot the subjects against a colour such as white, green or blue, or a colour that provides separation , so that the process can be expedited. i made the silly error of shooting against black. needless to say, it was hell to pay when i tried etching the individual figures out.
my deepest gratitude to tiffany and mark for agreeing to model for this shoot, to yusuf too for helping me to set up the lights and stand in as the test subject, and to victoria for doing hair and makeup. also, special thanks to everyone else who contributed gear and/or expertise to the shoot.
and of course, my 2 lovely stylists audrey and carina for working so hard on getting the clothes, doing the styling and layout. i think we are becoming a really solid team and i envision even greater things ahead!
for more posts on photography, click here.
anatomy of a dapper shoot
Tuesday January 27, 2009
in the latest edition of dapper, we wanted to stage a picnic and also do a shoot that reflected the cheery mood of the festive seasons. think bright, colours, happy, light, etc. as keywords. this spread was at the end titled ‘hello sunshine’, and below are the 5 photos ultimately selected.
i thought it would be a good idea to give readers am insight into how the shoot was accomplished. forgive me if i get a little too technical but i hope this makes for an informative read nonetheless.
firstly, the people involved in the shoot to whom many thanks are owed:
l-r: ahmad, me, joel, jayne, audrey, carina and sarah.
we started scouting and setting up at the botanic gardens at about 7.45 am and the shoot started proper at about 8.30 am when the models arrived. i wanted to do the shoot early as we were using speedlights (2 x nikon sb-800s and a canon 430ex) and i was concerned that the harsh brightness from the midday sun would prove too much for the speedlights to compete with. we ended shooting past midday anyways. more on that later.
i also did not want to be limited to shooting everything in the shade, which wouldn’t help to achieve the look we were after. the problem with small speedlights is that they lack the power that studio strobes possess. of course, i wished we had the luxury of bringing big strobes on location but that would be a logistical nightmare given the small crew.
final photos to be followed by the originals and a short explanation. here is the first:
this one was lit with 2 nikon sb-800s to either side of the models out of frame to create rim lights so that there will be some separation between the models and the background. frontal lighting provided by a photoflex silver reflector bouncing light from the sun, which was overhead and slightly behind subjects. a canon 430 ex on wide from the front augmented the light from the reflector.
some of the highlights that were too hot were then toned down in photoshop. the colours were given a boost. we did not have great sky that day (ah, the vagaries of outdoor shoots!) so i fixed that a little. also, the trees and the foliage in the background were trimmed to improve the composition of the picture.
exactly the same set-up as the first. since i was shooting wide, the lights could not be placed out of frame otherwise they would be too far away to have an effect. note that the lights were already set to full power. they were then cloned out in post. the sky was in a bad shape too so that got a bit of attention.
went in close for the next one. still the same scene. for this the rim lights were did away with. image then cleaned up and enhanced in photoshop.
the set-up for this one was relatively simple. we had a canon 430 ex fired through a shoot-thru umbrella on the left out of frame as the main light. the right side, especially jayne’s legs and the polka-dotted roller-case, was a tad too dark so we lifted the shadows with a sb-800 on low power.
for the last one we decided to move into the shade. the final image is actually a composite the 2 photos below it. both were lit in the same manner – 1 canon 430 ex zoomed in to 50mm directed at the subjects. the camera settings and position were set on lock-down. there were some variations in the tonality of both images so i used the first of the 2 as the base image, superimposed the other and masked out the rest of the scene before adjusting the levels so that the subjects looked as though they were really in the same scene together.
alright, there’s that. i know that it was a lengthy post so thanks for reading. for the next shoot i am thinking of something more dramatic and moody so keep an eye out for that one.
to view the final layout of the spread, click here.
for larger versions of the images, visit my flickr by clicking here.
also, do check out my newly revamped website!
turn on the bright lights (light)
Wednesday June 18, 2008
ok, here’s another self-portrait. i know what you are thinking but i happen to be my most willing model (pathetic, huh?). picture is kind of inspired by the title of an interpol album. been trying off-camera lighting and i have to say this is one of the better results so far. more to come.
for more posts on photography, click here.
to see the rest of my photos, visit my flickr. click here.
my bronze side
Wednesday May 21, 2008
i finally put the ikea table lamp to good use. had to stop when i smelled something funny coming from it. in case you are wondering why my head is consistently facing the same side, it’s because i was too lazy to move the lamp.
for more posts on photography, click here.
to see the rest of my photos, visit my flickr. click here.
