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.

1. New pictures
2. New video
3. New, uh, “enhancements”

One caveat, though — the new pictures are in the new video. So you’ll have to watch it to see them. But don’t worry, real static versions are coming to the blog soon.

Without further ado, here’s a little video I put together of Sam, made from stills and video of our latest beach shoot, as she competes for Miss Hooters of Canada 2010:

[RSS users, please click through to see video in your browser]

You might notice that Sammy looks a bit different since the last time you saw her… that’s what #3 above was referring to.

If you like what you see, do Sam a favour and vote for her from your mobile phone. Like the video says, text the name SAM to 747474 once per day, and you’ll be entered to win a trip to Hollywood, Florida for the Miss Hooters International Pageant.

She’s also on Twitter and has a Facebook Group too!

This is a previously unseen photo from my September 24, 2008 photoshoot with Brandi Latimer. This was three days after Brandi’s first fitness competition. Much like this September, the weather was amazingly hot when we shot — I somehow think this is Mother Nature’s way of rewarding us for our hideous winters.

Swimwear: Mayra Collection.

And then two new photos from our recent lingerie shoot on Labour Day weekend:

This last shot on the bed was particularly amusing, as Samantha’s top was about two sizes too small and provided some interesting post-production challenges in Photoshop.

All shots done with natural light except the first, which was with an Alien Bees 1600 in a shoot-through umbrella. All shots done using my 85mm f/1.8 lens.

Last year, Randall was a part of a small promo for the fashion label DSQUARED², and there was some hope early on that I would photograph it. That fell through, but it prompted Randall to note that had we worked together on that, we could have called ourselves RSQUARED. Ryan + Randall! We’ve used it as an affectionate nickname for our shoots since then, even though they have nothing to do with DSQUARED².

Randall is wearing a purple one-piece swimsuit from my collection of H&M items.

Tech details: Nikon D200, f/10, 1/200 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens set to 90mm. Sunrise in the back, Alien Bees 1600 with standard reflector in the front.

Shannon is a hideously awkward jumper and happy to admit it. It took a good 50 or 60 jumps to get this one, which looks pretty good. Next time with Shannon: a different wig (she has a collection).

I don’t see very many sunrises. But when I do, I always make sure I have a pretty girl to stand in front of them. This pretty girl is named Randall, and she’s the best model I know for a couple reasons. One, she met me at the beach at 5:45am even though she lives 45 minutes away. Two, she got chest-deep in Lake Ontario for me even though it was freezing. The air temperature was 12 degrees that morning when we started shooting!

This shot here was at 6:19am, well before we got in the water, and just slightly before the sun started peeking over the horizon. I’ve never seen anyone so chipper at 6am as Randall was. She was bouncing around, jumping up and down — frolicking, if you will. She was so excited and so cute doing it!

Tech details: Nikon D200, f/5.6, 1/125 with an 85mm f/1.8 lens. Sunrise in the back, Alien Bees 1600 with standard reflector in the front. Or maybe with a shoot-through umbrella. I can’t remember!

Oh Samantha, how I love thee. And it’s a good thing she loves me back, otherwise our photos together would suck. I picked up Sam at Hooters in Whitby and we braved the rush hour traffic to make it to the downtown ferry terminal. We had a long walk to the beach at Hanlan’s Point after getting off the ferry, so we had to scramble as there was only about 20 minutes of sunlight left. We fired off about four different looks until it was too dark for the camera to even focus on Sam’s lovely face. The shot above is early on, before the sun went below the horizon.

Tech details: Nikon D200, f/2.8, 1/60 with an 85mm f/1.8 lens. Natural light. Cold water.

A bonus shot from the beach:

Last week I photographed not one, not two, but three lovely young ladies in one afternoon. Like Shannon in the post below, Stephanie here is also not a model. But dig that crazy strawberry tattoo! This was her first time, so Steph was suuuuper nervous before the shoot. We had a smattering of spectators at our little beach in Oshawa, but she did just fine.

Tech details: Nikon D200, f/1.8, 1/1500 with an 85mm f/1.8 lens. My aforementioned 70-200mm lens was pissing me off too much with its soft results at the long end, so I shot fairly exclusively with the 85mm lens instead. Although I’m a lover of the soft, warm light at sunset, some compromises have to be made when I’m shooting three people in one day. Stephanie was photographed at about 3:30pm when the sun was still fairly harsh. For this shot I just turned her away from the sun and spot-metered off her face for a decent exposure.