UCSB Shoot with Scott Sneddon, Victoria Hansen and Michael McCann

I've worked at UCSB for over 30 years in IT. It was only a few months ago that I realized what a great location it is for photography, particularly fashion/glamor. So, I've been sneaking up on it since then and finally got the chance to try out some of the great backgrounds and areas. Victoria Hansen (http://www.modelmayhem.com/830819) contacted me and wanted to shoot and my friend Scott Sneddon (http://www.modelmayhem.com/364472) wanted to shoot with me while he is on leave from Korea where he is currently stationed. And my son, Michael, needed some experience shooting glamor. So, we packed up and went down to UCSB for an afternoon of exploring and shooting.

This is the first post i have done where I have tried to use URL's on other websites rather than uploading to Blogspot ... it didn't work as I expected so you will only see part of an image, but you can click on the images to see the whole image. Uploaded images resize. There is no mention that this won't be the case with links. I'll be more careful in the future.

UCSB has a lot of rules. They even have a few about using UCSB as a setting. They don't want people attributing things to UCSB that are not in keeping with the University's mission or using the University's image for commercial purposes. But they do allow Brooks students to shoot assignments. Since we were not commercial and aren't using UCSB for inappropriate purposes I figured we'd be OK ... plus I know a few people!

Scott has a fair amount of experience shooting models with "Strobist" Style equipment which is all he's had in Korea. Since I had no experience but plenty of equipment we decided it would be a good opportunity.

Scott had worked with Victoria before and had a good idea of what she could do. We took my truck and were soon walking around checking for locations. The courtyard of my building is a very concrete/industrial area so that's where we started. We set up two 580EX II's on stands with umbrellas and set them to slave units on channel one, one of each bank, A & B. I put my ST-E2 on a 1DMIII with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. We backed Victoria into a small architectural detail and played with the lights. Not the best but we were warming up.

I love to see behind the scenes shots so I know what was going on with lighting and surroundings so I'm borrowing one that Scott took of me shooting Victoria.

Next we wanted to try to shoot high f-stop to darken the sky but we just didn't have enough power to overwhelm the sky so we moved around and went with the building as background, still using the two lights held by Scott and Michael.

We had Victoria climbing around on everything. And since she climbs well, we next sent her up a tree, which was our most successful spot I think. We did have a bit of trouble getting the lights up high enough ... Michael, who is about 6' had his light on a fully extended lightstand and was on tippy toes.

From there we went to Kerr Hall which has some very unusual concrete texture on its exterior. Scott showed me how he set the lights for his "signature" shot and then put a gel on a 580EX that he held in his hand to give the concrete some color as well as texture. Very nice images.

Here's one with the gel on the wall.

I realize it would be nice to have more behind the scenes shots and I'm waiting for the price of Canon's G10 to come down to a reasonable price point, about $350, but I know everyone is trying their best to hold prices up even though there's no money around to buy stuff at the inflated prices they have gotten used to getting.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

Glamor: Janie Arnold

Every time I start blogging I am overtaken by events, but I am trying to keep posting. And while I will continue with the equipment review I think my Glamor Project is more interesting at the moment. The History: I bought a Bowens QUADX studio strobe system about four years ago as I had always wanted to try out those big fancy lights we always see in the "behind the scenes" photographs of models working. The images can really be stunning, but it takes a bit more care, time and experience than is immediately obvious. I used them a few times on family with some decent results. Then, about two and a half years ago we moved to our present house where there was an office and another room I am using as a studio. The studio is 10' x 17' with 9' ceiling ... way too small to be effective, but large enough to allow me to practice and experiment. It has taken me the last two years to finally get it mostly equipped ... there are still odds and ends like flags and gels that I need.

Back a couple of posts I talked about shooting Amber Rhodes, rising country singer/songwriter. I shot her for my friend Rick Barker. But my real goal is to learn to shoot glamor. And to that end I have joined ModelMayhem.com, an online resource for models, photographers and others in the industry. I also made a couple of contacts through Scott Sneddon, an Air Force sergeant and photographer currently deployed in Korea. Among much else, Scott introduced me to Janie Arnold, a 21 year old aspiring model and fitness student. While I have additional shoots in the pipeline and several more scheduled with various models, I'm going to briefly cover my two experimental shoots with Janie.

For the first shoot I wanted to work with a white seamless background along with my white studio walls and ceiling. I used two medium softboxes and some background lights in a very simple setup. As you will see in the accompanying images they are a bit overexposed, similar to the Amber Rhodes images ... an effect that I generally like. For the second shoot, I used black seamless, draped off the walls, used a beauty light for a main light, a softbox for fill, a gelled snoot for an accent light and low reflector/barn door head for side lighting ... a very different look.

I'm not really facile enough to give instruction in lighting at this point. I have spent countless hours reading forums and tutorials but it just takes a lot of hands on time to get the hang of it and I'm not there yet. So, enjoy the images. I will have additional glamor sessions to post in the future.

You can also see these images and many more from these sessions on my website in the Glamor Project section.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Amber Rhodes: Singer/Songwriter and Lovely Model

I mentioned on Thursday that I was busy and doing all sorts of things that were delaying my Equipment Review. Still promise that it will continue soon. But in the meantime I wanted to share my session with Amber Rhodes (www.AmberRhodes.com) in my studio. I don't know Amber's music, yet, but if she needs a break from the recording studio she can certainly work in the photography studio. Amber is a photographer's delight. Gushing with personality and a natural beauty with perfect skin, she simply took over her own session. She marched in with three outfits and a makeup kit, spent ten minutes getting ready in her first outfit while I did a lighting test with her guitarist, and then marched into the studio already laughing ... a quick wit and ready smile already in high gear.

One of the hallmarks of professional experienced models is that they require very little direction and have a huge range of facial expressions. Amber is every bit of that. She posed. She twirled. She bent, jumped, twisted, turned, plopped down. She gave the 'Girl Next Door' smile, the sultry look, the happy, the pouty, the come-hither. I got to shooting so fast that I popped a circuit breaker twice and got black images where the strobes hadn't recharged.

Amber is an American singer/songwriter out of Lexington, KY. She writes country, rock and pop. She is on the radar, so watch out for her.

Oh, some technical details: all images shot with Canon 1DsMIII and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. Lighting is two Bowens QUADX 3000 generators and five heads. Post processing consisted of LightRoom conversion with some resizing, levels, and color temperature. No retouching ... none ... not a spot removed or skin smoothed. Amber is a natural beauty.

You can see about 60 images in her gallery at my website at http://dwightmccann.com/Glamor/AmberRhodes05222008.html. Let me know what you think.

And once again, I promise to get back to my equipment review project soon.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Frank Doorhof Glamor Workshop in L.A. June 7 & 8, 2008

Many of you know that I am beginning to explore Portrait/Glamor photography. I've spent a bunch of money putting together a small studio in my house with high end equipment. I've spent a lot of time reading and experimenting. But when push comes to shove, the best learning comes from actually seeing what happens on a photo-shoot (as with the Jason Cole DVD I recently reviewed which has just started pressing and will be out in about two weeks) or even better, participating! Last year I attended Frank Doorhof's glamor workshop in Los Angeles and learned a huge amount. I had never used my lightmeter in the studio before the workshop ... I just tethered my camera to my laptop and did a long series of exposure tests until I got where I wanted. After seeing how to do this properly with my meter at Frank's workshop, it now takes maybe three test shots because the exposure is so close when I start. I now always do the first shot in every lighting change having the model hold a gray card to her face ... huge difference in white balance correction, as I saw in Frank's workshop. I also saw how to create subtle but interesting lighting on my background papers and how to use gels.

Since I can't recommend this kind of learning strongly enough and since Frank, from the Netherlands, is coming back to L.A. on June 7 & 8 this year, I wanted to make sure everyone was aware since he doesn't do much in the way of advertising. Frank runs sold out workshops back home every week. You can see a portfolio of his work at http://www.frankdoorhof.com/portfolio/ and his workshop schedule at http://www.fotografie-workshops.nl/ENGELS/overview.html with an email address to request a slot at a workshop.

So, you might ask if I am attending this year? No. I have conflicts with my casino work and will be out of the country immediately afterward ... and I had a free invitation, sigh. But Frank will be visiting with me for a couple of days to go wine tasting in the Sta. Rita Hills appellation where I live, visit a few missions, play at the ocean, and generally relax.

I'll have the next installation of the Equipment Review sometime in the next few days ... I'm very busy, as always.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Glamor Photography Instructional DVD: Jason Cole

This is sort of an advert for Jason Cole's soon to be released instructional glamor photography DVD: The Passion of the Art. Jason is a wedding and glamor photographer out of Wollongong, Australia, down the coast a bit from Sydney in NSW. He has shot for FHM and Ralph among other well known glamor slicks. For reasons not clear to me, Jason decided to put his vast experience into a DVD tutorial. I found out about it as he posted for suggestions at Photography-on-the.net, an online, somewhat Canon oriented forum run by a Finn with a very large, world-wide membership in which I have been a very active participant for the last three years. Next thing I knew, Jason (who doesn't know me from Adam) asked if I would be a Beta reviewer for the DVD, getting it a month or so before GA and giving him feedback. I explained to Jason that I didn't know much about glamor photography and he pointed out that this is just what he needed: someone familiar with all the equipment (cameras, studio lighting, experience shooting lots of things) but not experienced in glamor. So, I asked, "What's in it for me?" As he does so frequently, he laughed (well, actually, he put, "lolol" in his email) and said that he'd give me a final copy of the DVD when done. So I agreed. And now, even though it will not benefit me a farthing (or whatever the Aussies use for currency) I want to make you aware of its existence ... well, in a couple of more weeks. This is a really useful reference.

The Passion of the Art contains three basic sections: equipment, models and shooting. Jason explains the equipment he uses (which is Canon and Broncolor), some tidbits about models with help from his MUA, and then four extensive photoshoot sections: one in the studio, one in a mechanic's garage with lots of machinery, and two at the beaches of NSW. This is the meat of the DVD for me. Jason gives one tip after another on dealing with the models and setups and then you get to watch him do the shoots as he again narrates his activities. The videography is first rate rather than just having a friend with a consumer video standing around like the YouTube spots. He explains why he selects his lenses and lighting choices and shows what some lighting options look like and how each addition enhances the overall effect he is after.

What impressed me most about this DVD was getting to see and hear Jason work with the models. How he communicates with them. How he gets them into the right mood. How he gets the right look. And the second, and for many the most important thing is, he explains in depth how to shoot a magazine spread. He explains what is needed and then talks you through the shooting and finally shows how the post processed images to be given to the editor look. Each of the four shoots has a theme and he shows how to tie them together to make a coherent story.

At my latest check Jason was offering the DVD, due out in mid-April, for $69 USD at http://www.jasoncolephotography.com.au/_portal_page/off-pages/dvd-vol1/dvd-vol1.html.

Be Safe!

Dwight