Jodi Renee

October 27, 2008

I first met Jodi in 2005 when she contacted me via my website. She was training for a fitness competition at the time, so we coordinated a shoot on the day of the competition, during a break in the action, in fact! I picked her up downtown at the Convention Centre and we navigated the horrendous downtown traffic to the east-end Beaches location that I love so much.

It was a hot — nay, sweltering — day in June and we were shooting at high noon which only made it worse. Mid-day sun is also the worst for photography, creating harsh, unflattering shadows on the face. Jodi’s tanning spray, necessary for the bright stage lights of the competition, had already started to melt off her skin after just a few minutes in the intense 31°C heat.

My equipment at the time was modest: I set up a Nikon SB-800 flash on a tripod close to Jodi, and used my Nikon D70 to trigger it wirelessly using Nikon’s awesome Creative Lighting System. Under the right conditions, this system works fairly well. But under the challenging conditions described above, it was much more of a chore to get everything working as it should. Any wireless flash system that relies on an optical trigger will often fail if there is an abundance of bright light, such as the sun. What this meant is that I couldn’t be much more than about five feet away from the flash, otherwise it wouldn’t fire properly (or at all!). I had to use a lens with a fairly short focal length (for me, anyway) since I was standing so close to Jodi. The 85mm lens that I chose meant a lot of 3/4-length shots and not much else — full-lengths were out of the question since I couldn’t move away from the flash.

Jodi’s yellow bikini top ended up being overexposed in most of the photos due to my inability to properly control the light in the difficult conditions. The SB-800 did an admirable job, filling in all the harsh facial shadows.

A photo from this series was eventually published in the January 2006 issue of Maxim magazine, which is awesome considering the difficult constraints we faced in terms of time and light. Despite what the Maxim headline reads, Jodi was not my girlfriend, but that’s a story that I’ll share in the future.

Today, Jodi has transitioned from model to big-shot people photographer. I’ve assisted her on many weddings over the last three years or so, and she does a phenomenal job photographing families and kids. See for yourself at Jodi Renee’s blog and her website.

The Downside of Canada

October 23, 2008

I love my country. I really do. You don’t really hear Canadians talk about loving Canada as much as, say, Americans do about their country. Politics play a ridiculous role in that sentiment, but we’re here to talk photos.

I love my country.

Except that whole winter thing.

*sigh*

Most of my photos of pretty girls are shot on location, which means I travel a lot and shoot outdoors. I love natural light, and being from the “keep it simple, stupid” mindset means that I leave my studio strobes in the trunk whenever I can and adapt to whatever is naturally going on around me. This becomes an enormous challenge when the temperature dips below about 10°C or so, which has happened recently here in Toronto.

Two days ago the weather gods decided to antagonize us and we had our first snowfall of the season. Luckily it didn’t stick around long enough to accumulate on the ground, but it was a depressing sign of things to come. We had record-setting snowfall last winter, which led to the creation of the photo above. Despite the smile on her face, Brandi was freezing her balls off (so to speak) as we foolishly picked the coldest day in February to do an outdoor bikini shoot. The matching green hat and scarf were purely for show — they weren’t making an ounce of difference to Brandi, who ran back and forth between the field of snow and the house to keep warm. Hell, I was freezing too, despite being decked out in full winter regalia from head to toe. A -30°C windchill will do that to a person.

Besides weather, it’s a hell of a lot darker in the winter months. (As an aside, when I refer to “winter”, I pretty much mean any months that aren’t June, July, August, or September. And even September is a bit iffy some years.) The sun pretty much just taunts me for eight straight months: rising later, setting earlier, dipping behind clouds, and being a pain in the ass.

Brandi Latimer has been one of my more willing partners-in-crime over the last few years, as is obvious here. Check out her website and ModelMayhem profile.

Why Blog?

October 22, 2008

“Talking about art is like dancing about architecture.”

I’ve put off starting a blog for a long, long time because I hate talking about my photography and photos in general. I’m more than willing to spill the technical details of a shot, but don’t ask me about my motivations, about subtext, about themes — because you’re not going to get anywhere.

So why blog? Well it’s an easy way to promote my photos, an easy way to keep people updated, and a good way to network with other industry people. The higher Google ranking, the better, right?

The photo at the top is of Andreea, now living back home in Romania. She’s an interesting creature and you’ll hear more about her later. I’ve displayed that photo more often than any other since I started taking pictures. I consider it pretty representative of what I do. It’s my signature image, if you will, but only because I say it is. :)