My first printed book from AsukaBook arrived this week. Yes, they’re expensive. But yes, they’re totally worth it. The best part were the included white cotton gloves (don’t want fingerprints on the shiny new book) and FREE CANDY! Yeah. Free candy. Asuka rocks. It’s a shame they use UPS exclusively for shipping, though, as those idiots screw stuff up time and time again. Case in point: my box arrived with a gigantic hole punched in the top. It looks like another much heavier box fell on mine. Luckily the Asuka peeps packed the book well (bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts) so nothing got damaged. The shipping from Oregon was extraordinarily fast — I’ll give them that much.

Lastly, I just want to say how much I love my Sima SL-20LX video light which is what I’ve been using lately for additional lighting on the Night Nudes series. It’s a 20-LED super-bright light designed for video, but I’ve been using it handheld like a flashlight during long exposures to paint light where I want it. It’s compact, rechargeable, and awesome. Buy one. Buy seven.

Photos from the shoot coming soon!

Shot with a Nikon D700 and 85mm f/1.4 lens.

On Tuesday night I photographed an Ed Hardy swimwear fashion show at Karma Lounge in Oshawa, Ontario. Using the Nikon D700, I shot almost everything at ISO 6400 and f/1.4 due to the very low lighting in the club.

I also experimented with the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 DX lens on the D700, which is a full-frame (FX) body:

There’s never a shortage of interesting people to shoot at a club:

And that brings us to the swimwear models. You might be wondering, “Ryan, why did you make all these photos blue?” Answer after these:

One major issue with club photography is the very, very strange patterns, colours, and colour temperatures of lights that are used. This is one of the major reasons I shoot raw-format photos (instead of JPEG) — so that I have full control over white balance after the photos are taken. White balancing via the auto function of the camera, or trying to do it manually at the club is an exercise in frustration. Check out the example below of Ashley.

The photo on the left is what the camera decided the correct white balance should be in automatic mode (4450 degrees kelvin). The photo on the right is after correcting the white balance in Lightroom to the maximum allowed setting of 50,000 degrees kelvin (and also setting the tint to negative 150 to combat some of the pink hue). So now instead of looking purple, Ashley looks closer to a regular human again. The problem, if there is one, is that both versions look kinda cool. So rather than trying to pick one, I compromised and just tossed out all the colour and made the selenium toned versions you see above.

…push yourself until you cry and then go back for more…

[See post to watch Flash video]

Here’s a simple headshot we did with ghetto clamshell lighting:

Hasselblad H3D, ISO 100, f/11

Check out more clamshell lighting examples at Lighting Essentials.