Category Archives: Commercial

House of Raaj, Commercial Shoot with Viktoria Pleshakova

October 27, 2011

From a marketing prospective, one of the tradeoffs of doing commercial work is that you can’t publish your work right away, and sometimes never. If a company is releasing a new product or brand they often don’t want any imagery in the public eye until they officially launch.

Such was the case with House of Raaj. In their words: “House of Raaj is the FIRST and ONLY company that offers an online borrowing experience to its members with a large collection of celebrity designer sarees and authentic jewelry in 22kt gold, precious stones & certified diamonds.“

Raj, the owner, asked me to bring in makeup and hair and naturally I thought of Raney O’Keefe, whose work I really admire. It was two long days of shooting images for catalog and a few select shots to use for marketing and advertising placement. It was a pleasure working with Viktoria Pleshakova . . . having an experienced professional model always makes the shoot go smoother and faster.

P.S. As you may have noticed already, the logo on these images is different. It’s a sneak peek at the re-branding and website redesign we’ve been working on behind the scenes. Enjoy . . .

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Anatomy of an Image – Occasions Magazine Fall 2011 Cover

August 12, 2011

Here’s another post for the photographers out there. If you are a bride or just want to see wedding imagery, check out my portfolio for all the bridal and wedding goodness. My blog will be back to it’s regular programming shortly…

So here’s the cover we shot for the Occasions Magazine Fall 2001 Issue, shot at Foxhall Resort & Sporting Club with Bold American providing florals and decor. There’s more design goodness inside the magazine but we can only show the cover for now…

Looks simple huh?

So this where we started…

There were two big problems with Plan A: the SCREAMING late afternoon sunlight streaming in from the right side; and the general busy-ness of the background.

Solution to problem #1

I call it the wall of light. If you have lights already it costs you next to nothing: it’s just a big white sheet. It does two things… first, it serves as a huge scrim to block the sun (plus, it saves my assistants arms) and second, it becomes a 9 foot softbox when you light it from the other side, i.e. a wall of light. The reason I like the wall of light is because it preserves contrast in the scene (provided your wall of light is bright enough compared to whatever is on the other side) while leaving almost no shadows. In other words, it doesn’t look like you lit it at all. And that is pretty much always my goal.

So here it is: two Alien Bee 400s at roughly 1/4 power each, both firing off a Vagabond Mini Lithium battery, and a big white sheet I stole out of the laundry room at home. Impressive huh?

You’ve seen the wall of light before, here…

…and here…

…and a few other places I’m sure.

Solution to problem #2

So while I was setting up the wall of light, Heather was busy find a new vantage point with a better background, and here it is. What do you notice about these two images below?

The only difference between the two images above is the focal point: the left image is focused on the foreground plate/flower and the right image is focused on the chair. Look at the background. See how big a difference 3 feet can make on the overall “look” of the background?

I’m shooting at f/5 because I know that even at f/16 or f/22 I probably can’t get the entire table in focus (plus, shooting that stopped down will change the entire character of the image in a lot of ways) and at f/2 or f/2.8 my depth of field is so razor thin that it would be a pain to work with in post… so f/5 is a nice compromise.

30 or 40 images later we had the table decor exactly how we wanted it. So I got my tripod set up and took 5 images, each focusing on different elements of the table: the front of the foreground plate, the back of the foreground plate, the wine glass and flowers, the background plate, and the chair. Here they are laid out in Photoshop.

Here’s a little fun fact. Somewhere in the shuffle somebody moved the forks and forgot to put them back. Luckily, I had an earlier image of the forks and I managed to insert them. That is the only difference between the image above and the one below.

Here are images 2, 3, 4 and 5 with the background removed so you can see the pieces I took from each image.

And here’s the final image with a few touchups to the table cloth.

Whew!

Also posted in Post Process, Published – 10 Comments

Occasions Magazine Summer 2011 Issue Behind the Scenes

June 23, 2011

If you’re a regular reader of my blog or part of the wedding industry in Atlanta, you probably know that I work pretty closely with Occasions Magazine as a photographer and outside of that, wherever I can. For the Summer 2011 Issue we did a series of shoots for the magazine and I always try to get as many behind the scenes shots as I can. Of course, the really funny ones won’t get posted… but I’ll hold onto them for later in case I need to blackmail somebody.

Here’s the publisher, Heather Vreeland, laying down some last minute ideas to paper.

Below is one of our models, Taylor, in the makeup chair and the ever-fabulous Raney O’Keefe (AGAIN!) striking a pose. Note to photographers: in both of these shots, I was playing with my new Lensbaby Muse lens with the f/5.6 aperture ring insert thingy. Boy is that thing hard, but FUN! I could have picked up one of the newer versions, but honestly, I kind of enjoy the fight you have to go through the find and grab your focal point. So in case you were wondering, aside from the coloring and contrast bump, these two shots are straight out of the camera. Shot with a Nikon D3, of course.

Here’s a shot from a whole series of images we ended up not using but it was too cute to not show someone!

Taylor showing off her shoes — but nevermind the gorgeous Vera Wang (style: Delaney) she’s wearing! That’s Taylor’s mother, Tina Rowden, who also happens to be a great local photographer. The image on the right is what ended up in the magazine.

The last shoot we did was just to tie up loose ends for the content we needed for the issue.

Some of you may not know this, but Heather is actually a pretty incredible photographer. She has an amazing eye for composition so whenever we shoot I always (well, sometimes anyway) let her shoot a little bit with a “big boy camera.” I think if gives her a sense of power and world domination. Just a guess.

Also posted in Published, Wedding Industry – 3 Comments

Carrafina – Bridal Shoot + Behind the Scenes

June 22, 2011

It’s photoshoot day on the blog today. First up, we have a catalog shoot for a private-label dress designer, Carrafina. At the end of last year I was approached by Carrafina who was debuting their latest line of wedding gowns and was looking to “step up” their imagery. We brought in a few models and naturally, I brought in the ever-fabulous Raney O’Keefe to handle the hair and makeup. We ended up shooting about 65 dresses and various accessories over the course of the shoot at Ambient+ Studio.

Here are a few of my favorites featuring one of our models, Kristi Ryczek…

Here are a few behind the scenes images:

Chelsea is so fun to shoot with because she’s always playing jokes (you may remember Chelsea as the cover model for the Summer 2010 Issue of Occasions Magazine) … and you can always count on Raney for a pose!

Also posted in Wedding Industry – 2 Comments

Published: Occasions Magazine Fashion Feature, Part II

January 23, 2011

Photo shoots are a funny thing. Sometimes when you have a very controlled environment and a well defined goal, the images you get at the end are just what you envisioned. Other times, you just wing it and hopefully your ego doesn’t take too bad of a hit when the editor sees the images. This shoot for Occasions Magazine was closer to defined than winging it. Danny Wilson from The Savage Garden, Heather Vreeland and I met beforehand and discussed a few ideas and mapped out the day. Since the brunt of the work fell on Danny to provide all the florals, he needed a strong idea of how to prepare. And prepare he did!

But let me back up a little bit. When I think of the beautiful, historic Swan House, this is what I see in my head:

I think of the rich history and all the stories this building could tell if it could talk.

Remember what I said above about photo shoots? The image above and the next two didn’t even make the first round of cuts. Yet, fast forward a couple months and there it sits… a big, beautiful two-page spread to open up the fashion feature. This is quite easily my favorite image from the entire shoot.

And now I’m going show you something to make your jaw drop. I say that in complete humility because it really has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with our stunning model Madison Olson and the fabulous makeup by Raney O’Keefe. This image is basically straight out of the camera. No photoshop actions. No retouching. No fixing. No nothing.

I took the image out of the camera in RAW format, adjusted my color and exposure in Lightroom, and exported it. In fact, I didn’t retouch Madison in a single image in the entire magazine feature. Just amazing.

Remember what I said above about photo shoots? We had a little bit of free time (by “free time” I mean that we had 7 minutes and 35 seconds) and I said “Madison, let’s play.” So I grabbed Heather Vreeland’s new 50mm f/1.4 lens because I was really curious how the lens would perform and I wanted to play with it. In fact, a number of the images in the magazine were shot with that little 50mm lens she carries around with her in the camera bag she got from Target. So Madison and I ran around in the grass and came up with Heather’s favorite series of images from the shoot. This is just two of them…

Have you been paying attention to the beautiful floral headpieces Danny created for us?

Yes, she is IN the fountain. By this time, it was pretty much dark and we had to get creative with the lighting sources.

Here’s Danny with one of the props he brought along for the shoot — ya know, just in case — and Raney doing a little touch up work.

One more behind the scene’s shot, complete with my assistant hard at work in the background. He was probably tweeting about how hard I was working him.

Also posted in Bridals, My Favorites, News, Published, Wedding Industry – 6 Comments
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