Sexy Transportation

When I saw that the Strobist was calling for an assignment about transportation I said, why not! So I asked my friend Sarkis (that by the way is also my trustworthy mechanic) if he had a car worth the effort. It turns out that, not only he owns a wonderful 1972 Pantera de Tomaso, he also knows a friend, Brad, who has literally built a superb Cobra! As you say, two birds with a stone.

The shoot took place last Saturday in Pasadena, just in time to submit a photo for the Strobist assignment and it took a whole afternoon of preparation and set-up. My friend Juanse, also gave me a hand, one of those big hands that without you don't do much. Thanks Juanse!


By the way, the preparation for the shoot is worth a post by itself so I'll leave it for next time when Juanse gives me the shots he took while we were setting everything up.


For now enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think. You can also see them here on Flickr where I put some more details about how I shot them.


Thanks to Sarkis and Brad for letting me shoot their babies, I hope you like what came out of an afternoon of work.

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Emma, films and more...

Marta and I have been quite busy in the last four months, the little lady in the photo here is Emma, our superstar! So, not too much time for pictures actually, besides those of hers of course!

She is really a lot of fun and we've never been so happy. I have been photographing her in all sorts of set-ups, from natural light to multiple flashes, but the one I think came out nicer so far is this one.


Just one light by the love chair, very low, actually sitting on a shelf by the chair. It seems like she's on a mattress or something like that but actually it's one of those Asian chairs shaped like a walnut shell. I just love the way she's looking at me...so proud of her!

With the arrival of Emma I also got to discover and experiment a new thing for me: film! To make my friend John Free happy ;-) I got an old Nikon F3 (like 25 years old) and then a much newer Nikon F100. I love both of them for different reasons and the results I got from film with the scanner that Scott was super kind to lend me are pretty good, I think.

Here is an example of a shot taken with Ilford XP2 400 and the F3.


Just natural light here, but I love it.
We've been already camping with her in Yosemite (more about that later) and on the way back we stopped at June Lake and got this.

Same film, same camera, old stuff, old school, still pretty good! At last, we also stopped at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, amazing place, seriously, the oldest living being on Earth, how cool is that?! I mean, 4700 years old!!! Still standing, a little beaten up if you want, but hey, 4700 years old!

Here's one of them with the eastern Sierra in the back. Just beautiful! I shot this with the F100 and a Portra 160 NC film. I also tried some Velvia 50 slides but haven't got them back yet from the store.

By the way, they accepted my photos for the Pasadena ARTWalk again!! Put it down on your calendar, Saturday October 10, 2009, booth #4 at the corner between Colorado and El Molino in Pasadena! Come on over to see some prints and possibly, bring them home with you for a very reasonable price!

Finally, I'll be shooting some super cool cars next weekend and if what I have in mind works...well, it's gonna be really something!

Thanks

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Batman 2 and Pasadena ARTWalk

Last weekend we shot some more Batman pictures. We went to the place where last year I shot Bradley and took some nice shots.

Actually I was a little disappointed with the outcome of the photoshoot but...such is life, you learn by your mistakes.



This time we changed theme and I used a regular CTO on tungsten WB as the baseline for the pictures. The lighting was real simple, a cold light, a warm one in cross lighting pattern and a fill almost on axis with the camera.


You can see some more photos from this shoot here as usual.

This week then I'm gonna submit some of these to the Pasadena ARTWalk to see if they accept me for this year too. Here are the photos I chose to submit to the ARTWalk committee. Then between now and October we'll see if I manage to make some other stuff...



Thanks again to Jones and Erin for being such wonderful superheroes and to Juanse, Natalie and Javier for helping me out with the last shoot.

Stay tuned and wish me good luck!

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Batman is back in town!

I had the idea of shooting a superhero in downtown LA a couple of weeks ago. When I proposed the idea to Jones and Erin they immediately liked it and they also happened to have the prefect outfits so...it was a done deal from the beginning. Batman and Catwoman back to Gotham City...humm...I mean, LA.



So I started scouting for locations and, as you can imagine, in Los Angeles you only have to choose! These photos are from our first attempt. We quickly went from one place to another with Juanse and Natalie kindly acting as VAL's.



Their costumes were actually really good and for these photos I got inspired by the greenish desaturated look of so many action movies we have recently seen around.



We started from the bridge in the second photo, just around the City Hall. Then we went right in front of the City Hall and eventually we finished over the Disney Hall. That place is like a playground for photographers, I love it.



From there you get some good views of LA at night, plus it's super cool. We were able to shoot a few photos before we were gently asked to leave the premises because it was getting late.



The security guards even wondered if The Joker was hiding somewhere. But we were safe, we had Batman and Catwoman on our side!

As for the lighting, we generally used 2 snooted speedlights in a cross lighting pattern triggered by CLS with an SB-800 as commander. We gelled them with cold and warm tones for their faces, plus we had a 3rd speedlight with a strong green gel to fill in. My idea was to do a little bit of postprocessing to give the images the greenish desaturated look we often see in action movies, Batman included. For this reason the cold tone was 1/2 CTO + 1/2 Magenta. The warm tone is 1+1/2 CTO + 1/2 Magenta. The green light is a Full CTB + 2 full cuts of green. This way, the magenta on their faces would compensate the extra green I was going to add in postproduction making them look natural.

In postprocessing I used sodium vapor WB with the green slider almost all the way to the right and the temperature down to the min to add some more blue. The combination of WB and gels game me the tones I was looking for. I also desaturated the images a little bit.

You can see some more photos as usual on my Flickr page here.

Thanks again to all the people involved in this, especially to Jones and Erin.
But watch out, they are still around and you could find them anywhere...even in your favorite grocery store...

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Celebrate Dance 2009

This year's Celebrate Dance is promising to be a great show with nine dance companies performing the same night in a show produced by Jamie Nichols.

The shot above of Bradley Michaud of Method Contemporary Dance and part of the next one with Dana Vultaggio dancing for Deborah Rosen were chosen as the home page images for the event's website.


Check it out at Celebrate Dance 2009.
I know it doesn't mean much, but it certainly feels good!
Thanks to Jamie Nichols for choosing my images.

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Shooting in Milano

While in Milano for the holidays I agreed to photograph a couple of friends. Guenda and Barbara are terrific dancers and they found an amazing location. Barbara's partner shot a scene of a movie here. It's under a bridge of the "tangenziale", part of Milano's freeway system.


It was a lot of fun. Too bad I only had one strobe with me, but my luggage was already heavy enough.


You can see some more photos here along with a couple of shots of the location. Enjoy


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A quick portrait set-up

Couple of days ago I had all my lighting gear sitting in my living room waiting to be stored in the garage when Agnese asked me if I could take a portrait of her. She needed a nice picture for a paper she's publishing so while we were at it I shot a few more photos. Here is one of them.

There are a couple more on my flickr page here.
As you might imagine, the set-up here is very simple. Just a strobe high camera left shot through an umbrella to get some soft light and another one focused on the curtain in the back to enhance the separation between her and the background.

The day after it turned out that Marta needed a portrait too for a project she's working on now so I used the same set-up. I just changed the background and put the blanket that usually sits on our couch instead of the curtain.


This is the one I like the most, but at the end she decided to use another one. You can see the website here and my flickr page here.

Since I shot these in our living room at night, in both cases I gelled the key light with a full CTO + 1/4 to warm up a little bit their faces and balance the ambient light and then I played a little bit with the exposure for the background.

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