Another Photographer: Maya Washington

February 10, 2010

I can’t believe I’ve only ever talked about my friend Maya once on the blog before. Maya recently (like ten minutes ago) joined Flickr and you can see some of her work by clicking above. I met Maya waaay back in 2002 or so when she was a customer at my store and dropping off the odd roll of film here and there with some stunning images on them. I later hired her to work for me. She’s an energetic free spirit, having lived in Toronto and Vancouver (and soon New York City!) in the last couple years. In addition to being a stellar photographer, she’s also a fantastic model and actress, which means I’ll have to shoot her again before she heads down south. And now that I have a new Nikon D300s with HD video, maybe she can be my guinea pig for some video experiments too.

What has impressed me most about Maya’s photos over the years is her ability to do so much with so little. She started out with the most basic of basic digital SLRs and has very minimal amounts of lighting gear. She shot many of her photos in her Vancouver apartment (screw you, expensive studios) and makes trips to the thrift store part of her everyday life. Maya even has a blog devoted to her frugal ways: Frugal Artist.

To see more photos, check out Maya’s website.

Another Photographer: Steven Klein

December 4, 2008

“Portraiture in the past has been regarded as a documentation of a person but for me it is a documentation of the encounter between myself and the subject. It is not meant to reveal them, nor is it meant to subject them to an X-ray” — Steven Klein

I’m not one for artist statements or philosophy of photography nonsense, but if I had to pick something that describes how I feel about the whole thing, see above. I have mixed feelings about Steven Klein’s work as a photographer. As a subscriber to W Magazine, I see his work quite often. Two of my least favourite editorial spreads in the mag over the last couple years have been by Klein: Madonna Rides Again, 2006 (boring) and Scarlett and Natalie, 2008 (looking like tranny mannequins). Both can be found on Klein’s website.

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.