Bikini Week Casting Call 3 Pichers // The Blond Martini • San Diego

So I shot at the Blond Martini in downtown San Diego pretty much up the street from Horton Plaza. Interesting venue. Kinda reminded me of an old 80s Miami jazz lounge for some reason. I think it was all that green mirrory 1"x1" tile and brick motif; a place you might see a tackier Tony Montana. :p

I didn't bring any lights save for my crappy third-party speedlight that doesn't work well w/ my 5d2's TTL. (Anyone wanna donate a nice 580exII?) It was loud and echoy, I couldn't really understand anything any of my models were saying, and it was humid. But the music was cool. I found myself bobbing to the riddims more often than not. So all in all, I came out w/ some interesting imagery. I didn't shoot a whole lot this time but here's what I got. Enjoy!

Bikini Week Casting Call 3 Teaser!

So here's another BW2010 teaser shot! :)

Chloe, You Bounce To-And-Frowey

Ok, this lil' ball of energy is named Chloe. She's the recently-turned-5 lil' munchkin of an old car buddy of mine. She was the reason I'm considering buying a real speedlight to deal with changing lighting conditions and a kid who likes to run around close to the camera, then far away, then somewhere in between lol.

Anyway, on to the show. Here are a few of my favs:





Maybe I should concentrate on Black & White? Hmm...


This one's just plain AWESOME!


So that's her. Her personality is as bright as her sweater! And I figured if I can make good pictures of her, I can photograph almost anyone! ;)

And Yet Another One...

I did try and keep up with some natural lighting stuffs not related to cars. I think it turned out not too shabby. :)

Aww...isn't Sophorn cute? ^_^

Intro to Portrait Studio Lighting

I had a lot of fun with this. This time I was able to work with Jessy. She was such a trooper putting up with my inability to pose people. Here are my favs.

Untouched again. Keep in mind the pics uploaded WAY muted so no, she doesn't look that pasty irl lol.

New England Life Stock Photos v.2

So while I had a blast with Krista, I wasn't 100% satisfied with the outcome so I ended up re-shooting it with some other pals, J/L-dawgs, Pat, and Ethan. We went to this apple orchard in Vermont and let me say, the world is a pretty small world. The lady who was working the counter is actually from my home town. Eerie lol.

But yeah, the pics for this series turned out better. I'll post them when I can...hopefully this week.

-update-
So here they are. These turned out AWESOME! Jude's such a dope model...







You know, now that I look at em, I should've used them for my phase 1 final assignment. But oh well. Guess I'll just reshoot them in a similar style this weekend.

DigiAp + Flash = This

Ok, here's a few untouched images of the homie J/L-Dawgs.

The assignment was to see what happens when we shot flash onto a subject in open shade and in a backlit situation. We had to do certain things like power up the flash but keep the exposure the same. We also made the flash exposure one or two stops lower than ambient and exposed for flash.

I can't really remember what did what since a lot of my exposures came out very similar. Sucks, but I think I learned a lil somethin', somethin'...also, I think I've been really trying to concentrate on posing. I'm not used to shooting people, so 1) I'm hella uncomfy telling people to do stuff and 2) I don't even know what sorts of poses look good anyway. 3) I'm not even sure a lot of my models are down to do most of what I ask them anyway. Maybe I really do have to be like Rich and demonstrate first...

On with the show: