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.

Just came across this blog post about me by the photographer John Hildebrand from Malibu, California.  Thanks John!  Very nice of you to say. Check out his work at www.johnhildebrand.com He has a really nice beachy vibe to his work that I love, and he does quite a mix from fashion to architecture and landscapes.

That is actually something I learned through working in other markets around the world, it doesn’t always pay to specialize in one thing.  I know as new photographers we have all heard you need to develop a singular style in a specialty, this will make it easier for clients to understand where you fit into their market.  And that is true if you are in a big market like New York.  But if you are a photographer in a small market, you often have to do a bit of everything to maintain a successful business.  When I was living and working in Manila and Bangkok, I was doing it all….. from fashion, to ads for aspirin brands, interiors for hotels, even product shots of cereal boxes!  So, just keep in mind that a lot of what you do as a professional photographer is dependent on the market you are working in.

He mentioned that I don’t update my blog all that much….. it’s true! I haven’t been as good at keeping you updated, so I promise to devote a little more time to this blog.  And I also noticed that the photos that John used in his post about me still haven’t made it into my portfolio site!  I’ve been behind on getting things retouched and into my portfolio…… I’ve had about a six month back log of images that I just didn’t have time to get to!  Hopefully I’ll get all the new work onto the site in the next couple weeks.  Yet another reason to stay tuned

I just came across this post about me on the blog of Angel Acevedo, an art director in Miami.   Check it out at www.angelaacevedo.com And check out his portfolio too, very nice stuff.

He called me “the mysterious photographer that has single-handedly branded that Heritage 1981 style”.  That is very flattering!  But it also drives home the fact that I really need to promote myself more!  I don’t want to be a mystery to all the clients out there!

It’s good timing since I am just in the process of doing a major promotional campaign…. pretty much for the first time in my career.  So far, I’ve been lucky to get my work through word of mouth and blind luck.  I haven’t even had a real portfolio for the last year or two!!  I know, I’m embarrassed to admit it.  But it’s also been the busiest two years of my career… go figure!

This year I’ll be doing all sorts of promotion, from sourcebook ads to promo mailers.  And I’m finally getting my branding done.  It’s definitely been a learning experience, and I’ll be excited to share some of the details of the process with you once it’s all in place. Stay tuned……

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

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’s a film we shot for Urban Planet a few weeks ago.

This is cool, an artist named Howard Shum used my photo of Lyndsy Fonseca for an illustration.  She’s the actress I shot for Maxim Magazine that starred in Hot Tub Time Machine and Kick Ass.  And it was perfect timing, I got his email letting me know about the illustration WHILE I was watching the movie Kick Ass!