Amanda
May 2, 2011
Em Round Two
April 30, 2011
Round one with Emily was so successful, we decided to do it again. This time: outdoors!
At the beach, no less.
In mid-April.
It was like 12°C.
Ugh.
But we made pretty pictures!
Justine
October 2, 2010
One night last July, I was working as a club photographer in Oshawa at a place called Karma, which I’ve blogged about before. Clubs being what they are, there was no shortage of young, beautiful people. This girl caught my eye:
I snapped a few photos of her and then went about my business around the rest of the club, later posting them on Facebook. As I was posting them and had a closer look, I thought to myself, “I need to photograph this girl.” But how?
Patience and luck, that’s how.
Some 10 months later, the guy on the right side of the photo somehow found it on Facebook and made it his profile picture. The lovely young lady, who I now know to be Justine, saw it and commented on it. What a stroke of luck! I sent her a message right away and when she replied, I was surprised to find out that she had already previously lurked my photos on Model Mayhem and expressed admiration for them.
We immediately tried to set up a photo shoot, but life got in the way. After an excruciating five month wait, Justine texted me last week to see if we could squeeze in a sunrise shoot on the beach before the weather really started going downhill. Mere days later, we found ourselves on the beach at 7am, shivering in the 14 degree cold. And while it’s not the coldest bikini shoot I’ve ever done, it’s certainly the latest in the season.
Justine was a trooper for sure. Just look at how little she’s wearing in such cold weather, all with a big smile on her face. I don’t know about you, but getting up at 4am and driving an hour from Port Perry to Toronto sure makes her happy. This was shot with just natural light.
With a background in figure skating, she can handle the cold a bit better than most. She didn’t even complain once! This too was natural light.
Yes, that sky is totally real! The sunrise was amazing, but I needed an Alien Bees 1600 unit to overpower the sun and light up Justine sufficiently.
First Shot of the Day
August 28, 2010
The End of Summer
August 25, 2010
I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of photographing Samantha.
The day before our shoot was scheduled, the forecast for the shoot day was miserable (rain) so we called it off. But when shoot day came around, the weatherman had some good news: the rain would be done by 4pm. Sam and I hopped on the ferry and got to Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands around 5:30pm. It was still raining when we got there, but I could see blue sky on the horizon. We chilled on a bench for about half an hour and then got down to business when the rain stopped.
It was still a bit overcast here, but bright, and I used a Nikon SB-900 in a shoot-through umbrella to give a little punch to an image that would have otherwise been very flat. Also processed with a bit of a retro flare:
Best of all, we had the entire beach to ourselves! It was a weekend afternoon, downtown Toronto, on a huge popular beach — and there was no one but us around. Glorious.
Natural light:
The sun never really came out at any point, as it was low on the horizon and the dark clouds were still obscuring it. But higher up in the sky and opposite to where the sun would be was all blue sky and dramatic cloud formations:
As the sun started setting, we got some colour in the sky:
And what fun would the lake be if Sam didn’t get in it?
Christine
August 16, 2010
It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of shooting Christine. We headed out to Martinique Beach in Nova Scotia at sunrise to do this shoot.
First, a fairly straight-up bikini shot:
Now let’s do the same thing, but moodier, with a little backlight and some monochrome processing:
Outfit change! Get wet:
How about no outfit at all? Unless seashells count:
And finally, one of the nicest headshots I’ve ever taken:
The Blonde Bombshell
August 6, 2010
Meet Gillian.
Long story short: what you’re looking at here are two shots that were taken during a quickie ten minute photoshoot about 30 minutes before sunset on a super foggy evening in Nova Scotia. Despite the short shooting time, it took an epically long five hours to get to this point, during which we enjoyed not one but two ice cream cones, as well as insults from random passers-by on horseback.
I can’t make this stuff up if I tried.
For what it’s worth, Gillian told me before we met that she was out of shape and a bit rusty. If that’s the case, then I can’t imagine how good our photos will be when she’s in top form.
Swimwear from H&M.
More Marietta
August 2, 2010
I can’t resist…
She’s Dutch-Indonesian, which is what gives her such an interesting look.
Amy at the Beach
August 1, 2010
I’m working through my Nova Scotia photos in chronological order. First up was Marietta and now it’s my old all-time favourite, Amy. Below you’ll find two of the four concepts that we did throughout my 10-day stay on the east coast. Still to come from my trip: more Marietta, more Amy, Gillian, Madison, and Christine!
I think this first photo is probably the best one we made, and it was so simple to set up. We just needed a few basic ingredients:
- late evening sunlight
- a beach (Silver Sands Beach in Cow Bay, Nova Scotia)
- $20 Reebok swimsuit (from the Cookstown Outlet Mall)
- statuesque pose
Amy is very bendy, as you can see. Years of cheerleading.
The next two photos were taken closer to sunset, in a $23 dress I found at Urban Planet.
And finally, a rare smile! I think I said something funny.
Marietta
July 31, 2010
Marietta is a modelling machine.
We had hoped for a sunny afternoon and beautiful sunset at Martinique Beach — alas, Nova Scotia weather being what it is did not cooperate with us. I think we still turned out some stellar stuff.
I’m in love with her face. Ten points to the first person who can guess her (mixed) heritage.
