One Year Ago Today
Posted by Ryan in In Studio, Pretty Girls, Time Lapse Videos on February 1st, 2010
One year ago today, I shot in a studio for the first time.
I’ve posted photos from this shoot before, but now you can glimpse behind the scenes to see how it was done in this time lapse video.
Model: Randall Lome. Music: “Lovely Allen” by Holy Fuck.
[RSS users, please click through to the blog so you can view the video.]
Another Photographer: Heather Windsor
Posted by Ryan in Other Photographers on January 31st, 2010
Meet Heather.
Heather is a friend of mine who takes pictures and today she opened her brand new studio space in Bowmanville, Ontario.
But before we talk about that, you need to know more about her!
Heather friended me on Facebook about a year ago, after realizing that we had each shot two of the same models. We hit it off right away, sharing our best photographic stories and insights. With Heather based a fair distance away from me in Oshawa, our first real-life meeting didn’t happen til many months later… at Hooters. Yes, Hooters. We had fried pickles and they were delicious. Hush.
She doesn’t like talking about herself on her website, but she’s a bit more chatty on her blog. And if you like what you see there, join the Facebook fan page.
Heather is a hardworking mom and fabulous photographer, so when she asked me to drive the 70km or so to Bowmanville and photograph her grand opening, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
There were tasty treats from Custom Cakeworks:
Check out this crazy nice wallpaper:
The size of these windows makes me very excited:
Mayor of the Municipality of Clarington, Jim Abernethy, even came out for the ribbon cutting:
I’ve been bugging Heather a lot about when I can start using the space to shoot in, and I’m glad the answer is… now! I hope to get in there before the end of February and have a whole bunch of brand new content for everyone to see.
Les Coquettes Present: Love Story
Posted by Ryan in In Studio, Time Lapse Videos on January 23rd, 2010
The 2010 Les Coquettes season is underway with their February production of Love Story. I once again photographed the poster art/ad campaign.
Photo: Ryan Visima (moi); Layout and Design: Jake; Models: Georgie Gates (Dana Bondy), The Carpenter (Dave Lapsley); Makeup: Angela McQueen
The goal was a Harlequin romance novel level of cheesiness, and I think we hit it big time. Check out the lighting setup:
Dana and Dave are on a dark grey seamless backdrop. The main light was an Alien Bees 1600 in a 24×36 softbox. The rim light was a Nikon SB-900 at full power, with a warm orange gel, to simulate Dana and Dave being lit up by the romantic fire that rages behind them. The reflector in the bottom right corner actually wasn’t to reflect any light at all — we used it as an impromptu wind machine. La Minouche (Catherine Skinner) waved it furiously for the better part of half an hour! The image was also flipped on the horizontal axis in post, which is why the diagram doesn’t match up with the light sources in the photo.
Back to Les Coquettes… It’s an exciting season for a couple reasons. First up is a new venue, the Lower Ossington Theatre. The shot above was produced in one of the rehearsal facilities at the LOT.
I recently got a new camera (Nikon D300s), so my old Nikon D200 has been relegated to backup status. That makes it perfect for things like time lapse videos, so I made a little behind-the-scenes magic for your enjoyment. It stops just short of where we actually started shooting the poster content. The camera’s intervalometer was set to 4 second intervals and I took 1,486 shots between 8:00pm and 9:40pm. It’s being played back at 24fps.
The second exciting reason is a new venture in tiered ticket prices and fundraising. The layout of the venue provides some flexibility in terms of seating, so there’s three different price levels — proceeds from the upper price tier are going towards the Toronto Youth Theatre.
Best of all, Love Story is being presented twice in one night — each show being slightly different from the other. Want to see a bawdy night of burlesque and then have a romantic Valentine’s dinner after the show? Go for it — the first show is at 7pm. Prefer to eat first and be entertained later? That’s cool too, because the late show starts at 9:30.
This is awesome for me, the photographer, who usually can’t enjoy the full spectrum of the show when seeing it through my viewfinder. So I’ll get to watch one show and photograph the other.
The show is three weeks away, but tickets are already selling out. See you there!
Montreal
Posted by Ryan in Time Lapse Videos on January 22nd, 2010
Time lapse in Montreal, August 2008.
Flickr Faves
Posted by Ryan in Flickr Faves on January 22nd, 2010
My most favouritest photos from Flickr this week:
Jessie Sulidis
Posted by Ryan in Pretty Girls on January 9th, 2010
Meet Jessie. She’s a contestant this year on season 14 of ABC’s The Bachelor.
But before she did that, she did a lot of other things… I thought I’d share a few photos of Jessie over the years (pre implants).
I’ve known Jessie since 2004, when I met her as she competed in the Miss Molson Indy Toronto pageant. She won that contest and later claimed the national title in Vancouver.
Also featured in the photos above are Playboy Cyber Girl Lynne Allmendinger (nee Kush), Playboy cover model Zdenka Micka, Canadian radio/TV host Kathy Mueller, Canadian television personality Diana Ciccone, and Miss Oktoberfest Krystal Benesch.
Over the years, I’ve partnered with Jessie on various projects, one of which was a series of bikini contests in the Oakville area in 2007. Jessie organized and hosted the events with her friend Sarah Bradley, and I photographed them.
I won’t rehash all of her skills and accomplishments here on the blog, as information about her is easily available elsewhere on the web, but I will tell you that Jessie is a fine makeup artist (in addition to her acting and singing). When I photographed Brandi Latimer for the first time, Jessie was there to handle makeup duties and this is what we came up with:
Jessie shows off her crazy side in this photo from a 2005 Christmas party:
Lastly, I leave you with this amusing clip of Jessie doing a little Wii boxing from her 23rd birthday party:
Sarah has created a Facebook page for fans of Jessie, or you can check out Jessie’s website.
One Year Ago Today
Posted by Ryan in On Location, Pretty Girls on January 2nd, 2010
It’s hard to believe that Lauren was once the fat, gap-toothed, drama nerd in high school.
She grew up.
Two Years Ago Today
Posted by Ryan in On Location, Pretty Girls on December 19th, 2009
My gorgeous friend Katie, just 17 here, photographed at the Jam Martini bar. Nikon Speedlight bounced off the ceiling.
The green and white object behind Katie’s chin bothers the hell out of me, but this was just a quick snap so I can’t be too hard on myself.
Another Photographer: Rankin
Posted by Ryan in Other Photographers, Pretty Girls on December 18th, 2009
Rankin (wiki), celebrity photographer extraordinaire, embarked on a very ambitious project earlier this year. Having photographed the likes of Lindsay Lohan, David Bowie, Hugh Grant, Britney Spears, and other mega-celebs, he opened up his photography services to the British public. A paltry fee of £50 would get you fifteen minutes with Rankin and a print of your final photo, with all the profits going to Oxfam.
There’s a site, of course, and you can find some of my favourites from these sessions below:
Back in 2005, I embarked on a project where I tried to photograph 100 people in two months. It didn’t work out, but I ended up with one slightly Rankin-esque image from those sessions, well before I even knew who he was. Overexposure and desaturation are the keys here, but there’s still far too much colour in the skin compared to Rankin’s shots. I shot this with one hotshoe flash in an umbrella, directly in front of the subject, about six inches above my camera and angled downwards:
