Sunday, March 27, 2011

Faking Daylight: Portrait Session with Michael Asino

A few weeks ago, Michael Asino, an artist, commissioned me to take his portrait to be used in his social networking accounts. Michael, being a very busy person, is just available at night. We did the shoot in my place in Santa Rosa at around 9:00pm.

Mike, wanted his photo to look a bit casual but still presentable as he is being contacted by his clients mostly in social networking accounts, particularly in facebook. We sat for a few minutes and talked about the "feel" he wanted for the final photo. We both agreed to make the photo, black and white to have that "classic" feel. I told him that the photo should also feel "light" and not stiff for him to look very cordial.

I wanted the photo to look as if it was taken during a sunny day. I sat Mike near a window and placed one of my speedlights behind him to make it look like as if the sun is just gleaming through the window. To light his face, I placed a reflector near him to bounce the light from the speedlight to his face.

Mike is not used to having his photos taken and looked very stiff so I started a conversation while I was taking his photo. I wanted to capture a very natural smile so I started asking things about his daughter. Right away, Mike, thinking about his daughter, let out a very warm smile and I was able to capture it. Here's the final photo and a simple diagram of my lighting set up.



camera: 85mm 1/200 2.8 200ISO
speedlight: TTL +1.0

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Monday, March 7, 2011

High Key Photography: Available Light

A couple of weeks ago, I had a portrait session with my friend's little sister, Grey. I took her portraits as my graduation gift to her. Here are the photographs...



(click to zoom in)

The location? A studio? Nope. I took the photos in my room's veranda. Grey and her sister, Gretle went to my place at around 3:00pm. I started taking photos at around 5:00pm after all the preparations (make up etc.) and chikahan (catching up). I took advantage of the sun's position in the sky during that time which was directly parallel to us. I asked Gretle to hold a diffuser (my big 5-in-1 reflector's diffuser) behind Grey, with the sun behind it. I metered at Grey's left cheek and overexposed by a stop, set the focus in her left eye and then started taking photos.

Here is a simple diagram of our setup:

diagram
Camera Settings: 1/200 1.8 85mm

At that time, the color temperature of the sun was a bit warm and gave the photos a reddish tint for I used the daylight white balance which I thought was ok but after a few adjustments when I was post-processing the photos, I ended up making the photos look colder, which I thought was perfect because Grey was wearing winter clothes.


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Monday, February 28, 2011

Laiya, Batangas



went to Laiya, Batangas with friends and their friends. t'was fun meeting new people who loves spinning. new poi friends for me

PS this is my first attempt to shoot a video. bear with my shaky hands. lack of equipment. hehe Click here to view full entry...

Monday, February 14, 2011

Diane Wilson Matias

Shot in Kagoshima, Japan

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