Archive for category Pretty Girls

Samantha in the Studio

I’ve been using my friend Heather’s studio lately. Winter sucks for shooting as I’m pretty accustomed to shooting outdoors. And although our current Toronto winter is better than most, it’s still far too frigid to shoot outdoors on a regular basis.

The studio is in Bowmanville, which is a long trek for me, but totally worth it. A couple weeks ago, I shot a familiar face for those of you who follow the blog — Samantha. I’ve only processed one shot from the shoot so far:

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The pose and outfit was Sam’s idea. I lit her with an Alien Bees 1600 strobe in a Photoflex softbox, up high to camera right. The background is dark grey seamless paper, lit with a Nikon SB-800 on a tripod. The SB-800’s zoom head was set to about 135mm, for a narrow beam of light across the background, just enough to give Sam some separation.

But I also did another fun time-lapse video:

[RSS users, please click through to the blog so you can view the video.]

The video is composed of 2,290 separate pictures, glued together using QuickTime Pro (version 7, as they’ve stripped this functionality out of the newer versions). I was using my ancient Nikon D70S tethered to a MacBook Pro running Sofortbild. Because the D70S doesn’t have an intervalometer built in, the Sofortbild software is necessary to accomplish pictures at set intervals. Despite setting the intervals to one second, I ended up with photos that were five seconds apart. I suspect this is due to the D70S’s slow buffering, processing, and/or transfer speeds, but I don’t know for sure as I have no real way to test it.

Music: Anger (Rare Force 2 Meg Mix) by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

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Facebook Fan Page

Become a fan of vtography on Facebook!

Kelly would want you to. :)

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One Year Ago Today

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.]

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Jessie Sulidis

Meet Jessie. She’s a contestant this year on season 14 of ABC’s The Bachelor.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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Jessie shows off her crazy side in this photo from a 2005 Christmas party:

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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.

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One Year Ago Today

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It’s hard to believe that Lauren was once the fat, gap-toothed, drama nerd in high school.

She grew up.

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Two Years Ago Today

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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.

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Another Photographer: Rankin

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:

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One Year

This very blog turned ONE back in October, and I forgot to celebrate!

Here’s Randall showing you how much she loves the number one:

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Shya Overload

There was an overwhelmingly positive reaction to my latest headshot of Shya (see previous posts here). Because I like making you folks happy, here’s a brand new smattering of Shya photos from our second shoot together back in September.

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Her face is just pure sex, isn’t it?

All the shots here were done with pure window light and I used a mix of lenses. My 17-55mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8, and 85mm f/1.8 were all put to use for these. Location was the Pantages Hotel in Toronto.

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