Happy Birthday, Sam!
Sam in the Tub
Miss Hooters Canada 2011 in Montréal, Québec
I’ve just returned from Montréal, Québec, where the Miss Hooters Canada 2011 contest was held at the Hooters South Shore location. I went to support my girl Samantha as she competed against sixteen other Hooters girls from across the country. There was representation from Montréal, Toronto, Whitby, Hamilton, Edmonton, Barrie, and Winnipeg.
Congratulations go out to the winner, Cristina, from Montréal. First runner up was Alex from Winnipeg. Second runner up was Alexandra from Downtown Toronto.
I’ve picked out the best photo of each girl to display below, but if you want to see the complete 70 photo set, you can check it out on my Flickr.
Competitors:
- Flavy from Montréal
- Luna from Edmonton
- Kayleigh from Whitby
- Cristina from Montréal (winner)
- Andrea from Hamilton
- Paulina from Downtown Toronto
- Vanessa from Montréal
- Samantha from Whitby
- Alexandra from Downtown Toronto (2nd runner up)
- Emily from Montréal
- Elissa from Barrie
- Ashley from Downtown Toronto
- Alexandria from Hamilton
- Alex from Winnipeg (1st runner up)
- Melissa from Toronto Airport
- Meaghan from Edmonton
- Olivia from Montréal
Final Shot of Sam in the Studio
The Last of Sam in the Studio
I’ve used Heather Windsor’s studio in Bowmanville, Ontario for the last year as my shooting home. And as any regular reader of this blog knows, Samantha is the one model I’ve photographed more often than any other in that space. So here’s a couple images from our last shoot before the studio was shut down.
Samantha in the Snow
If you recall, the last time I tried this particular shoot, myself and the model froze our asses right off. Sam and I were much luckier, as we picked a day where it was nearly 10°C. She barely shivered at all, and her only war wounds were some really red knees from crawling around in the snow.
Looks like we did this at juuuuust the right time, as it’s getting pretty warm now and all the snow is gone around the GTA.
Double Sam
Slippery
Golden
Samantha wears my gold lamé dress from American Apparel.
See the setup shot below. I wrote a bit about this before, but this was the first time I used my brand new AlienBees 86″ Parabolic Light Modifier (PLM), which is a beast of a modifier. It throws an absolute ton of light. I’m so in love with it. It’s definitely a studio-only light, as its gargantuan size makes it impractical for smaller spaces; outdoors it would just act like an enormous sail and blow away.
Pros
- Huge soft light source that’s very directional
- Easy setup. It’s baffling that Alien Bees can’t make the Moon Unit/ABR800 combo friendlier to use when the PLM is so well designed.
- Shipping was fast, despite the many reports of it seemingly being back ordered for decades
Cons
- Enormous, can only be used in large indoor spaces
- Even with a low-powered light like an AB400, there’s no way that shooting at wide-open apertures (like f/2.8) is a possibility. Stopping way down is the only option here because of the amount of light this thing generates.































