Here is a campaign we did for Forever 21 in the studio.  They asked for a different lighting look than we normally do to set this campaign apart slightly.  We settled on this backlit lighting scheme that gives us a really bright high key look overall, with lot’s of softness from the flared lights.  It’s actually a really simple set up, we pour tons of light onto our white background, and then only use reflection to bounce all that light back onto our model.  Then it’s just a matter of balancing the bright back lights with the right amount of reflection to dial in the look.  I’ve used this lighting for fashion editorial, where the pictures are more about mood than about clothes….. in that case we really let the backlights flare so they wash out a lot of detail on our subject…. it gives it a wonderfully soft and ethereal glow.  But since this was a retail fashion campaign I didn’t want to wash those details out……  the creatives would have loved the look, but the CEO might question how they are selling clothes when you can’t see any!  The trick with fashion advertising is to find that balance.

Here is our latest fashion video from the Urban Planet campaign shoot a few weeks ago in Brooklyn, New York.

Urban Planet is a cool fashion retailer from Canada and this season they were going for a bit of a grunge style.  It’s always fun for me to shoot with these guys because it’s a different style than I normally do, a bit moodier and more dramatic.

I worked with the wonderful Urban Planet art director Ian Mclleland, and production was kept smooth and trouble free by Christine Kelly, and our stylist Kelly Brown put great outfits together and was a joy as always.

I wasn’t going to have the time or the budget to bring my full crew and equipment package from Los Angeles, so Jacob at CSI Rentals put together everything for me from scratch.  I was a bit nervous about working with assistants provided by a rental house, but they turned out to be the most professional and hard working group of guys I have ever come across!  Thanks Tom Judge, Mark Glenn, Justin Conly, and David Chow!

To make things easier on myself I rented the Digital, Lighting and Grip Van package from CSI….. basically a vehicle that is full of all the equipment you would ever need on a location photo shoot.  This service is common place in Los Angeles, we use them all the time, but as far as I know CSI is one of the only companies that provides this in New York.  I have to say, it was a pleasure not to have to travel through the airport with my usual six giant Pelican cases of equipment!

We shot the video at the same time as the still photoshoot, which is always a massive challenge.  We don’t want to slow the still shoot down because we still need to get about 20 or so shots done in a day, but at the same time we want to do MORE than just a simple behind the scenes video.  It’s just a matter of dividing our forces.  My cameraman is Christian Stoehr who has a lot of experience shooting television and feature films, so he has a good eye and is used to the run and gun style of shooting this requires.

We go into the shoot with an idea of a story we want to tell on video, map out some shots, and I give as much direction as I can. During the shoot, whenever I have time I’ll stay with him and direct the scenes, but since I’m still responsible for getting the still shoot done, I often have to leave him to his own devices.  For this shoot I made sure he also had a camera assistant since we were at a pretty rough location on one of the hottest days of the year in New York.  And the assistant really earned his money that day, there was a point when he almost passed out from the heat!

We shot this on the Canon 5D equipment, and for this one we only had a tripod and a RedRock shoulder rig….. we didn’t have the room to bring the steadycam and slider from L.A.  One thing we have learned with the Canon 5D is that you have to load a cinematic Picture Profile when shooting video….. it mimics shooting on color negative film, sort of flattens out the color, exposure and contrast.  This gives us much more leeway in our color and exposure adjustments in post, and lends the final product a more cinematic feel.

This is also the first video that I have edited completely on my own.  I fought learning Final Cut Pro…. I didn’t want yet another super intensive piece of software in my brain…. it must be getting completely filled up in there by now!  But I’ve realized unless I really knew software and workflow, I was never gonna get the results I wanted.  Filmmaking is a much more collaborative process than photography, but everyone still needs to have a background in everyone else’s job to be able to communicate effectively.  So now that I understand Final Cut and the editing process, I feel like I’m going to be a lot better at working with professional editors on my future videos.

So hope you enjoy the video, and below are a few of the still photos I pulled off the Urban Planet website.  I’ll get around to editing this shoot and retouching these for my portfolio soon.

Here are a few photos from a studio swim shoot we did for Forever 21. I love this light, so crisp, vibrant and simple….. it makes the models and the clothes really pop! There is no secret to it, it’s just a single light pointed directly at the models. It won’t work in all situations but it was perfect for this kind of shoot.

Forever 21 will soon be opening a flagship store in New York’s Times Square, and here is the video we did for the giant billboard display above the store opening. It’s a behind the scenes from a recent campaign we did for them. It’s fun knowing there is a 30 foot billboard right in the middle of times square with video of me working!

And here is a picture a friend of mine took of the billboard, and below are some of the pictures from the campaign.

We’ve spent the last week editing some films we shot for various Forever 21 brands.  These were all shot in conjunction with still photo shoots I was doing.

This was from the Forever 21 Magazine photo shoot, two days on location around various spots in Los Angeles.

This was for the HTG81 Kids brand.. a fantastic day on location at an mini golf amusement park.

And finally a Behind the Scenes video from a recent studio shoot.

We shot all these films on the Canon 5D and 7D cameras.  These cameras are so quick to work with, they’re  really the only cameras we could use to get these kinds of films done while also shooting a still job. We have started working with the Red camera for a higher end look on bigger film projects…. the camera is amazing and the footage is great to work with, but it definitely slows things down.  And the crew required is quite different as well…. we need a camera tech, focus puller, and all sorts of other specialists when working with the Red.  But for certain projects it’s the only way to go.

I can’t wait until these technolgies meet somewhere in the middle… a more robust and film centric Canon DSLR or a simplified and lighter Red.

Here is another campaign we did recently for Forever 21.  We shot at an old ranch in Malibu that was owned by a retired LAPD policeman.  He was a big collector of western memorabilia, and after his retirement started a business providing props for films.  It was quite fun touring around the property and seeing props I recognized from movies like  City Slickers, and pretty much every western in recent memory.

Last weekend I saw the movie She’s Out of My League, which co-starred the lovely Krysten Ritter. I shot her a short while ago for Maxim Magazine so I thought it would be a good time to add the photo here.  I was excited to shoot her because she plays a really compelling character in one of my favorite shows on TV, Breaking Bad.  It’s always nice to shoot with people I admire, and she turned out to be a really sweet and funny person, which made it even better.

A few images from a photo shoot with the singer Keri Hilson.

Here is our latest campaign for Heritage 1981 that goes along with the little film I uploaded to the blog a couple weeks back.  We shot at the pool of the Pink Motel in Sun Valley, Califoria.  A great location, and we were blessed with lovely weather.  It was a big project since we divided our time between the video and the still images, but all in all we ended up with a really nice campaign.

I just got the latest issue of Maxim Magazine in the mail with my photo shoot of Lyndsy Fonseca in it.  Those of you who know me know I don’t pay much attention to celebrity stuff, so I wasn’t super familiar with Lyndsy’s work.  I read she had done tons of TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives, Big Love, and lots more… and also knew she had a really good agent.  But I was excited to read in Maxim that she is coming out in two new movies I really want to see….. Hot Tub Time Machine and Kick Ass!  They both look really funny, which makes sense because Lyndsy was a gas to have on set and a genuinely sweet girl.  I’m sure she is gonna go far, so I’m happy I had the opportunity to shoot with her.

Perfect timing again, we just finished retouching a picture of Lyndsy for my portfolio when Maxim came in the mail, so here is the image I chose and the image that Maxim printed.