Shoot the CEO...and all the founders

Almost a year has past since my last post. Lot's of things happening, Emma has become already a little lady and she'll soon have a little sister. I haven't done a lot of shooting lately but recently I was asked to shoot the portraits of the founders of a start-up company here in Pasadena and I took the occasion to post one of the photos.




This is Malcolm Cloyd, CEO and founder of ATS, a.k.a. Advanced TeleSensors Inc. I also shot all the other founders and used the same lighting scheme for all. Kind of pleased with the result, even though I wish I had used a hair light too to give him a little more separation from the background. Simple set-up, softbox camera right as key, reflector camera left as small fill, backlight on subject's right shoulder and background light hitting the curtain behind him.

May these photos bring good fortune to ATS and its founders. One day I might be able to say that I was the first one to shoot them before they became famous!

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Pasadena Civic Ballet

Just a quick post to say that I recently shot an event at the Pasadena Civic Ballet where young and very young dancers enjoyed performing in front of a numerous audience. Some of them were at their first performance, others, like my friend Silvia here in this photo, despite the young age were seniors. All of them were extremely good.

Good luck to all the dancers and keep up the good work, I look forward to enjoying your next performance!

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Pasadena ARTWalk 2009

Just a quick reminder that the Pasadena ARTWalk is coming up Saturday October 12 from 11am to 5pm in Pasadena (Between Colorado and Green on El Molino). I was assigned booth #4 so you'll find me there with the latest prints.


Beside the Batman pictures I'll show some prints of the cars I shot recently for the Strobist assignment and many more.

For more details about the event check their site here. You'll see my name among those of the many artists accepted for this year's edition. It's gonna be fun.

Looking forward to it and remember, every picture is for sale!

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One afternoon, two cars, four pictures...

...or, how to spend an afternoon shooting two very cool cars and have some fun!

So, you already saw the results, the 4 pictures in the previous post. Let's go a little bit backstage and see how everything came to be the way it is.


We started setting stuff up around 3pm. In the first picture you can see the place where the shoot took place. It's the front side of a building facing west, here in Pasadena. There is lots of space in front of it so it seemed like a good location. For the first shot of Sarkis's Pantera, the idea was to shoot it sideways so that you could see just the rim of the car. You can see the result here.

The main lights were two SB-800's at full power in manual mode shot through two home made silk panels about 4'x5' and held together by PVC pipes, the same stuff you use for your sprinklers, cheap, light, easy to find and assemble in any form or shape needed. A few A-clamps to keep the silk tight and you made a pretty basic soft box. It's not great but it's absolutely the cheapest thing you can do. And it works ok, I must say. Also, I put a flag under each SB-800 to limit to a minimum the spillover of the lights on the ground. I wanted to hit just the car if possible and both SB-800's where also zoomed to 105mm.

The left SB-800 is attached to what we called the "airplane ladder", I didn't have enough light stands for everything so...there you go, it worked great. This one was gelled red and the opposite one was gelled with a full CTB.

Then we have two more lights on small tripods, SB-600's this time, at 1/4 or 1/8 power in manual. They are snooted and aimed at each wheel. No gels here.

The two 800's were group A and the two 600's were group B. This way I could just use the on camera flash and trigger all of them. Unfortunately the D300 can only trigger 2 groups, unless you want to use one SB-800 as a commander. But since I could not adjust them separately, I had to move each one of them a little bit back and forth until I got pretty much the power I wanted.

Behind the car we put two curtains and a black bed sheet clamped to the building door to create some negative fill.

And then, there is the sun! So, to get rid of the sun we had two options: wait until dark, or be creative...so, this is what we called a flying fork-lift!


Luckily it wasn't too windy and we were fine. That big sail made of plastic tarps kept me and the cars in shade during the shoot, at least until the sun went down for good.


Here's a view from the Pantera during the second shot and here is yours truly at work with the protection of the big green sail!


I was underexposing the ambient light by at least 3 stops so I wasn't afraid to pick that green up in the shots.


Here is our working area during the second Pantera shot from the camera position while I'm adjusting things around. As you can see the big sail was pretty effective even though we were still adjusting it.

Finally, there are two shots, one of each car, showing the lights at work. When we shot the Pantera it was about 6pm and the ambient light was still pretty strong even in the shade. When we shot the Cobra it was a little darker, but by 7pm we were done.


As you can see from these pictures the main lights are not illuminating the silk evenly, but we had to zoom them to the max not to spill out. We were also reflecting lots of light back but there was nothing we could do about that without real soft-boxes.


The last touch in each picture was the water on the ground, added to create some nice reflections. In the end I'm pretty happy with the results. We can do better, I'm sure, but as a first attempt I think it's a success. So, next time I have to light a car with small lights at least I know where to start from.
Thanks to Juanse, Sarkis and Brad for their help, support and extreme availability. without you guys I couldn't have made it.
And a special thanks to my wife Marta, and my 4 months old daughter Emma that came to see me at work. Emma fell asleep during the shoot and she didn't wake up not even when the guys fired up those amazing engines...now, that's sleeping hard!!
Thanks again

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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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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.

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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!

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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.

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Pasadena ARTWalk is coming up!

Yesterday night I attended a reception at El Portal organized by the Pasadena Playhouse District Association. You can see what happened and get more details here. They invited all the artists that have been chosen to participate at the next Pasadena ARTWalk.


I printed lots of photos, including some from the "Elements of Dance" project and many more.
I look forward to it and I hope lots of people will show up. Don't forget, Saturday October 11th from 11am to 5pm on El Molino between Colorado and Green.
It'll be fun.

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Dancing with Paints - Moorpark Edition

Caitlyn and Gene made another wonderful piece of art in front of a good crowd at the High Studio Gallery in Moorpark last weekend. As you know, it was also the first time I was exhibiting my work in an art gallery and it felt so good!


Caitlyn first danced on the canvas with dancing shoes, then she removed them to continue bare foot and finally Gene finished the work of art with his vision.


It was a great show! There a few more photos here on Flickr as usual, including a couple I took immediately after Caitlyn ... painted the rest of the gallery!


And here is my mug, posing for Marta in front of my photos of the previous show featured in the Gallery. Oh, did I mention it was my first exhibition?
Thanks to all of you that made this possible!

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We made it!!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's with great pleasure and a bit of pride that I announce you that I was selected from the Pasadena ARTWalk Jury to exhibit my photos on October 11th 2008 from 11am to 5pm on El Molino Ave. between Colorado Blvd. and Green St.
Most likely they just didn't want to give me back the money of the pre-registration, that's what it is, but...WHO CARES, I'm in!!!


I want to thank Cesar, Caitlyn, Bradley and Deborah for willing to participate to my "Elements of Dance" idea/project and make this whole thing possible. Without you guys I would probably spend my spare time taking pictures of bugs in my backyard.
So, THANK YOU!!
I also want to thank Marta for helping me out on this and most of all for giving me the idea in the first place! What would I do without you?!

Now I have to decide which photo to print and in which format, how many, how to present them, how to hang them and a whole lot of other details so, I've gotta go back to work.
But, don't forget, next October 11th, between 11am and 5pm, come see me at the Pasadena ARTWalk, you never know, you might even feel like buying one of my prints!!
For more info on the Pasadena ARTWalk, check their site here.

I look forward to see you there!

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Sculpting Giangi's body

Giangi and I had this idea in mind for some time. I was picturing him bare chested against the sunset sky somewhere in the forest. For the lighting, among others, I was inspired by Martin Prihoda, check him out here. A simple three lights set-up. Two behind Giangi on each side to make a nice rim of highlights and one in front of him high up and shot through an umbrella to light up his face and his body.
For this photoshoot, also, I was going to use for the first time many new toys that I spent endless hours working on in the past few weeks. More on that at the end of the post along with some strobist info.


I wanted him to look strong and powerful and highlight his muscles. I had in mind some old photo of Bruce Lee and stuff like that. We were also tempted to take some action shots but then with this lighting I thought we were better off with static ones.
Still, I think his intensity and his strength come through.


Recently I heard that the magazine "In Touch" voted David Beckham for the best abs of the star system for his photoshoot as a testimonial for Emporio Armani ... well, I think our Giangi would have ranked pretty high too, if they only knew about him!
You can see Beckham here just for the sake of comparison, of course.


You can see some more of Giangi's muscles here. Also, I know there is a long list of girls that were waiting for these photos to come out so... what do you think? Is he good or what? Why don't you leave your comments here?

For our strobists, there is a photo with the lighting set-up and a few more details here. Anyway, now that everything worked out, I must say that those speed straps are really cool. I made them myself and used them to gel the flashes, attach the flags on the two flashes behind Giangi and to hold the grid and the gel on the one above him.
I'll soon post some more info on how I did those and a few more light shaping tools I have been playing with recently.

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