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...

>> See full post and comments

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.

>> See full post and comments

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


>> See full post and comments

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.

>> See full post and comments

Raul Plasencia

Raul Plasencia is a very good artist. A painter, a classical painter as Edith, his daughter, like to say. She asked me if I could help her make a nice portfolio of his paintings and...while I was there, I took a quick portrait of them.

Here are a couple of his paintings.


The above one is a small Don Quijote,


and this one a view of Venice, Italy, that he visited a few times.

He's also very good at portraits and he would make your own for a reasonable fee. You can check a few more of his paintings on my flickr page here.


Enjoy his paintings and in case you want one for yourself just let me know and I'll put you in contact with him.

>> See full post and comments

Thank you!

I wanted to thank all of you for helping me at the ARTWalk last weekend.

Here are a few snapshots from the event.

It was a great success and your support was very much appreciated!


My apologies if you passed by after I left, but I'm sure Giangi and Nuria were able to take care of you.


Thanks again!

>> See full post and comments

My first time...

Last weekend my friend Deborah organized a photoshoot at the Diavolo Dance Space in downtown LA. It was my first time in a real theater. Really a good experience and definitely a lot of work but I think we captured some good moments.

All the shots were taken with a combination of theatrical lights and strobes in various configurations. You can see a few more here on my flickr page.


Thanks to Deborah Rosen for making this possible, to Jerry for helping me a great deal in setting up the lights and to all the dancers for their performance!


I hope you enjoy them.

>> See full post and comments