I had the pleasure to work with Melise the other day.  I think Melise must mean amazing in Egyptian! Seriously, perfect light, amazing location and stunning subject! Not much more I could ask for – except maybe to be able to shoot her and Joe’s upcoming wedding!

p.s. Joe, thanks for all your hard work!

This post contains nudity

You would never be able to tell from the images but yesterday morning we had another one of those severe storms that flooded a good portion of DC.  Severe enough to cause this.  And of course, guess where the shoot was? In the heart of DC.  I think it took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to go about 8 miles!  It was a rough commute to get there, but totally worth it.

Isabella was a stunning pleasure to work with! Soft, elegant with a quiet intensity and a definite know how to her craft; and she definitely has patience.  I cant tell you how many times I had to tinker with those damn lights, just to get it right – she just smiled, gave me great suggestions and we were on our way.  Is it me or does she resemble Rhona Mitra a bit?

Also gotta say thanks to Paulo for having a great studio for us to use!

And I cant forgot to thank Reyhan for the styling, you helped the shoot succeed!
Clothing: American Apparel
Shoes: Bakers

Now lets hope those security cameras in the alley way weren’t on…

A little about light:
All artificially lit shots were light with a 22″ beauty dish at various angles (as main) intermittently used highlight and backdrop lights. These were all shot with a white seamless.
Natural light – window and overcast sky.

slideshow can be maximized by clicking the fullscreen button at the bottom right.

Nick is actually the first male model I ever photographed back in Spring of  ’08.  You’ll actually see his face in my Faces gallery a few times.  Shooting Nick up close always produces great images thanks to his really strong features and piercing eyes.  While this is not a comparison to the compliment, I’ve heard a few people say that he somewhat resembles 50 Cent (teal hoodie photos) – I’ll leave that open to discussion

We spent about 2 hours in 95 degree heat looking for and shooting ‘urban’ scenes in the Wheaton/Kensington area.  First stop was the mall where we got some really great shots, however as we were getting even better shots mall security nicely told us we were not allowed to take pictures – I hate these stupid anti-photography ‘laws’.

Next was a random alley way in Kensington and a quick trip over to the train station – gotta love dumpsters as a back drop!

Always nice to re-unite after some time.

A bit about lighting: For the majority of the shoot I used my trusty reflector to either balance light on Nick or to highlight him from various angles.  I really love natural light so I spend a lot of time looking where the light is hitting or where we can be in a shady area that has good exposure to soft light.

This post contains implied nudity

Don’t let the feature image fool you, this shoot was really about stockings and heels!  This was round two of my little themed shoot. First round was with Katlyn seen here and some on my 18+ gallery.

This time of course with Anya, who at this point no longer needs an introduction. We shot at the home studio for a few hours, got some good laughs in and some cool, sexy and crazy images – crazy referring to the creepy (in a successful way) white stockings+gun+black makeup look.  I still remember both of our reactions when looking at the previews on the back of the camera, it felt like we entered another world.

Definitely pleased with what we captured.  I’m still trying to find a particular style, or look, or idea, or something that will really make my work unique and appealing.  Maybe once we build our dream studio in our oversized back yard it’ll open up a can of more creative juices

A bit about lighting: All natural, no reflector.  One of the reasons I love shooting out of my living room. Walls and ceilings are white, ceiling to floor windows and at the right time of the day, nothing but perfect light.  Some of the couch shots did have a 9′ white backdrop behind, but still all natural light.   Most of these images are in B&W but one of the drawbacks I noticed while in color was the green tint from all the greenery outside, especially that effing holly right against the front window.  I was especially pleased when we discovered the between-the-window-and-curtain look; the light was almost magical and made her catch lights, which I’m always obsessed with, look amazing.

This evening I spent about 2 hours raiding my archive cd cases from pre-2005.  It amazes me the things I used to ‘backup.’  I was actually in search of a particular image of an old roommate of mine, nothing I’ll post on here. One, because its super embarrassing both in terms of my crappy photoshop – actually I think I may have done this in PAINT; Two because of what I did to him in the photo… Lets just say he was in an uncompromising position and I ‘pasted’ someone in the picture to make it even more uncompromising – ah the immaturities of being young.

But I digress.  I found an old video of me braving a climbing wall at Kings Dominion from 2001 (April 14th).

Then I found my old skydiving video! (4/24/2005)
5 minute video, free fall occurs between 2:15-3:00.  Please excuse my adrenaline rush screaming and head bobbing

I think she may be the first model I ever contacted/met from Model Mayhem. And yet it took almost 3 years before I had the pleasure of photographing her.  It was a pleasure (as are 99% of my shoots).  Had a great time between shooting and playing God of  War III with Salsa – our splendid MUA.

Enjoy the pics (taken 3/18/2010)…

Always a great thing to find a model with unbridled and creative passion for photography.  This is so the case with Anya.  And I’m not just saying that because she practically out-climbed me at Great Falls (barefoot) but because she truly loves what she does.  I cant tell you how much work this shoot was for both of us.  The climbing, slipping, receiving jagged rocks in different body parts, the rain, the LONG walk back to the car and let not forget the Error 20 from my 5Dii which is currently awaiting repair at Canon Service Center.

Enjoy

This morning at 5:04a, Kristiaan grabs my arm and screams “wtf is that!?” I groggily answered, “a helicopter.” At least to me, it was the sound of a helicopter from the opening scene of part one… You know that DEEP bass sound that resonates through everything? Like resonates enough to shake us in our bed…

So I totally knew it was an earthquake but common sense said no friggin way!. So I went back to sleep while Kristiaan checked every window in the house to see if she could see anything outside – now that I think about it, the sound could have been a tank, or two, rolling down are street.

A few minutes later, aftershock “there it is again!” she exclaimed – I thought the helicopter was just passing by again.

No really, I’m not joking, its on the internet so it must be true.

p.s. Cant post without a pic so… nothing more appropriate than snow in July.

In early April I was approached by my co-worker Samir who was curious about having personal portraits taken.  Typically, people who I know very well I like to do very casual, low profile shoots to keep things simple – especially for folks who arent used to being photographed.   So we just decided to shoot during lunch one day at work, which I found out later was totally illegal – I will not comment any further Anyway, Eric decided to join us and I got a few simple casual shots of them.

The location (light) is pretty amazing but, getting questioned by security is not so cool, so unfortunately I doubt I will get to shoot there again.

So Spain won the world cup is a pretty horribly officiated and boring game that ended up as 1-0 in overtime. The highlight of the was lunch, cod with avocado(Haitian style), cornmeal with beans and dumplings. Oh and some tasty tomatoes from moms garden!

Now for a little garden story. Friday I decided to go fill up my squirrel feeder since its been empty for so long. As I was climbing up the stairs I noticed that one of the windows had been broken. I thought this was due to the one stupid squirrel that couldnt figure out how to open the lid like all the others. After I attempted to repair the broken window with mesh, filled it up with peanuts then attach back to the tree I saw the same dumb squirrel start biting away at the mesh… sigh. The next day I noticed the mesh was totally gone and that almost all the peanuts had been eaten. So again, climb back up and this time I noticed the next window was broken and a bb (pellet gun) dent was in the side of the feeder. It looks like someones been shooting my feeder, and not just dented the metal, but also broken the next window – so I have to assume the first window was broken the same way. So now my feeder is down for major repairs AND I’ll be moving it to another section of the yard. From the position of the feeder and the damage from the dent it could have only come from the left side of my yard. Meaning my neighbor, or some kid standing at my fence… the audacity of me suffering from the same delinquent activities I partook in as a kid

More garden story. Rats are smart. This is probably the inspiration for Secret of NIMH.   A few weeks ago I noticed a rat traversing my neighbors (to the right) yard and going under his shed.  A few days ago I saw the little focker in my yard so I decided to buy one of those humane traps because I dont want to kill the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks.  I’ve seen the trap over turned, door down multiple times but not rat – at least the food isnt being eaten.  Either way its been about 4 days of attempted trapping and no rat, or any other animal for that matter.  All I want to do is shoot the little bastard with my bb gun!

I also would like to catch the jerk shooting my feeder.

Oh and if youre curious about the turtle, I found him next to the rat trap Friday morning.  Kristiaan and I went on a turtle release date that same day at Sligo Creek park.

7/12/10 – With Rodrigo Y Gabriela playing on my iPod, in the rain, I went chainsaw crazy on the two front corners of the house. Lets see how easily those critters get up on the roof now…