Fashion Photographer
This session I played around with the background by adding various shapely objects and lines in attempt to make the graphics stronger. As I mentioned a few blog posts back, last year I didn't focus much on the background of my photos, which is why I've been recently prioritizing set styling.
Thank you to my lovely teammates for making this photoshoot happen!
Danielle @ Anita Norris Models (Model)
Vanessa Garland (HMUA)
Michelle Davis (Stylist)
I shoot most of my work with a digital camera primarily for ergonomic reasons.
However, what I truly long for is the results one can get from film photography. The degree of tonality I can get is off the charts gorgeous, significantly adding to the realness of the image.
Here's a throwback to last summer's location shoot with the beautiful & very skilled model, Megan @annitanorrismodels, shot in collaboration with my awesome teammates Vanessa and Michelle!
Stylist: Michelle Davis
HMUA: Vanessa Garland
This is the result of my experimental session where I tried to make the background more intricate. My goal here was to use recognizable shapes placed organically to add visual interest. I'm not sure If I've achieved the exact feeling I want, but I'm expecting to experiment more in the coming year!
Kaitie (Ciotti Models)
Michelle Davis (Stylist)
Vanessa Garland (HMUA)
I spent last year focusing on models mainly as a graphic with several visual components. In the editing process, they were perceived through the language of skin tone, lighting, colour grading, and emotive posing.
However, I've recently been focusing on taking a step back and experimenting with whats behind the model. My goal this year is to try to understand what makes a background busy and intricate while still being interesting and non-distracting. The challenge will be to find that fine line between chaotic and organic.
I will post my attempts in future posts :)
In remembrance of my team's hard work from 2017, here's a image from a recent editorial :)
Recently we shot an editorial titled "Red Pepper," an exclusive editorial for Design Scene.
Instead of going for the traditional clean tan skin, this time I experimented with a more raw and organic look. In order to achieve that effect, I tweaked the skin colour to an almost ill-looking state, whereby I added a large amount of grain in the final processing stage. The complete story can be viewed in my gallery.
Hope you all enjoy this story, and a big shout out to my awesome team mates!
Nadja (Elite Toronto)
Vanessa Garland (HMUA)
Michelle Davis (Stylist)
This time, it was my intention to make the model's skin tone look like the colour of sand by the ocean. I wanted to create a dry and worn out feeling while remaining edgy and fashionable.
I still need to figure out a way to lessen the information in the mid range colour tones so that the image looks more graphical. Nevertheless, I am grateful to have been able to try out this new method thanks to great team work by Sher (MUA), Uno (Hair), and Michelle (Stylist).
The other day, I had the opportunity to work with Keltie who temporarily in Toronto to build her book before heading back to New York.
It was a breeze styling her this time as she already had a unique look and strong features.
When it comes to my editing process, I started colour grading in the raw stage this time instead of doing it later on in Photoshop.
In my opinion, you can achieve a more unique colour result since there's more information to manipulate in the raw format ;)
The other day, we had an opportunity to set up a beauty editorial with the talented makeup artist Sherlyn Torres. For this session, I tried a couple of gobos in my studio experimenting with what type of light shape I could make. I used a relatively hard light to preserve the edge nicely, and tried various objects such as duct tape and table placemats.
Here's the photo created with light shaped from duct tape :)
I often edit models' skin tone to be more on the tan side, increasing the saturation to add impact. This time I took a different turn and went for a dewy pale look. To enhance her naturally pale skin, I added a blue gel in the fill, as well as further manipulation in post-processing.
Here's a photo from the session with the artistic model Anica from Elite Toronto :)
As of 2016, I've decided to reconsider my colour grading.
It's a whole other world for visual artists to dig into, that is a challenging and sensitive process.
These days, I've been experimenting with a variety of yellow tones in order to enhance the emotional content.
This is a photo from a recent shoot with Stella (Elite models).
Stella was only 14 years old when we had the session, yet already had a strong artistic sense and quickly understood the process of creativity. I was totally impressed by her.
I hope she is going to be a super successful model in the near future :)
Please check out my gallery page for more photos ;)