Day 9 of 9 - Beauty Product for West Edmonton Mall

Today we wrapped up the final day of 12 shoots in 9 days.

It was a full day of beauty products shot for WEM. Today I worked with the WEM marketing team and pretty much huddled around the studio step up we brought to the location.

The shoot itself was varied. We shot shoes, jewelry, and make up. So the lighting needed to change a bit to ensure each product was shot properly. I am very happy with the results of everything I shot the past 9 days.

I thought I would post this pic, as I know I will be asked by a few readers about shooting the shoes. How did we get the straps to stay? It was Luke's idea - Fishing line.

I personally have used other methods, but the line worked great and I will be using it again in the future.  

Thanks for all the comments via email and checking in each day to see what's up. I am taking the next 5 days off of shooting (and blogging)... and going to process some of the shoots over the next little bit.

Next week some pretty cool shoots, so check back and I have a lot of nice tear sheets that came in over the past week I want to post as well.

Ciao!

C

Day 8 of 9 West Edmonton Mall bridal fashion spread.

(my shot, which will not make the cut, because it does not work stylistically.. but its nice)

Today we spent the whole day shooting West Edmonton Mall's 2010 bridal fashion spread. The shoot itself took place at WEM and we were supported by their great marketing team.

As many readers of my previous blog posts know I sketch out pretty much every shoot I do. Its a previs technique I learned in Television which is basically storyboarding.

I use sketches as guide line when things arent going so well, or when I want a refresher when shooting for 6hrs or more. If you look at the sketch on the right, you will notice its an awful lot like the photo above. I used the sketch as a starting point, and in the final image, basically evolved the idea to a more "straight up" pose. For this shoot I brought 3 pages with 6 sketches each.

The shoot itself we shot 9 or 10 dresses with 6 different models.

Stylistically we had to shoot it on white or light grey because the women were going to be "cut" out and placed in the layout. This posed a challenge as dresses are white and we wanted the images to be easily cut out, with little or no color casts.

I shot it on the Phase One because I really wanted the highlight details so the designers could have great tonal range making their job easier.

At the end however I did do one shot the way "I wanted" and the lead designer Luke was cool with letting me do it. Its the girl in the red dress (the first image on this post) on the dark grey background. Although this shot rocks (in my opinion) It is completely un-usable in the spread because its too moody and too dark for the concept.

That's the thing a lot of photographers forget, often what they may consider are the best looking photographs are not the ones that can be used in print because of things like layout or conflicting style dictate how you need to shoot.

(stylist from Evelyn Charls touching up hair)
I think that's why it's really important for a photographer to be able to understand different styles and ways of shooting.

Please excuse all the dust specks... these again are clean out of camera with 0 touch ups.

Enjoy!



C

Day 7 of 9.... to calgary and back again..

Day 7 of 9

Its 12:30am. I got back to edm from cgy at 11pm, then booked it straight to the studio to prep and sketch for tomorrows fashion spread for West Edmonton Mall. We arrive at 8am, so I have to post this and head off to bed.

Shooting in CGY went well today. I shot another round of images for a skin care clinic. The owner had a some really out there ideas, so as you can see they are really off the wall, I cant really post alot of these because they need to be chosen by the client. 

(troopers.... It was cold out side! )

Before the crazy skin care photos. I shot some trash the dress photographs for Sarah and her two closest friends from high school. They are all married and are each other's brides maids. So Sarah thought it would be fun to do the photos as a group.

(i think all girls like twirling in the streets in their wedding dress)

Pretty much all of these were shot on the Phase One camera.  

 Sarah's dad is does astronomy photography as a hobby. In chatting with him, I found out he can actually shoot galaxies from his telescope. I plan on visiting him when I get a chance, but time was just to tight on this trip.

(when i asked Sarah to take off her shoes, one of the girls politely told her to watch out for needles... now thats urban shooting!)

Enjoy!

C

Day 6 of 9 (product in studio)

Today was pretty easy, just shooting product in studio. It was kinda nice because I had a chance to catch up on sleep.. I didnt get into the studio till noon.

I the first series was more windows product for Pure Vision. The other was a 12 inch sideshow collectables figure. 

I had alot of fun shooting the sideshow figure because of the insane detail the figure sported. 

(i did more than just play with action figures today!)

I really don't have much to write about shooting product on seamless with the exception that I pretty much used various strobe lighting techniques to get the results I needed.

(windows product is in no way as cool as action figures)

Just this quick post, as I have to head back to Calgary tomorrow at 9am for a 12noon shoot.

Enjoy!

C

DAY 5 OF 9 Long day of Interiors and a Readers Digest tearsheet

I just got back from shooting another round of Interiors for the new 9 schools built by Bird Graham in Calgary. We started at 7am and ended at 5pm. (So I drove to CGY last night arriving at 11pm to get a few hours sleep)

 I have finished shooting the Bird Graham project, and am hoping in some spare hours tomorrow to process out all the proofs for the client for mid next week.

My CGY hotel was really nice. The Acclaim hotel in north Calgary, which is brand new. Plus I just loved the Acclaim's tag line of "Sleep with someone new" - brilliant!  

(racial based hand puppets for Kindergarden kids, I had to pose for a pic with them)

Processing out 18 schools with exteriors and interiors is going to be a lot of work, and I am kind of dreading it. I also need to fit it into my the time line of shooting more product tomorrow in studio which needs to be shot for a Monday deadline.

Anyways I also wrote a blog earlier this month on seeing your work in print quite a while after you shoot the project. Well I shot a portrait of a for readers digest in early spring for their Canadian Innovators section, and I hadn't seen it in print until today.

I was taking a bit of a break in the teachers' lounge at a school, and picked up this month's issue of Digest and saw the piece. We shot it knowing they were going to blend the image into a blue background.

I really thought they would have picked another image of him holding a molecule.

I think they choose this one because he was smiling, which is cool. But I rather prefer the other one I have posted below.

Either way it worked out, and I like the rendering the graphic team did for it.

Anyways its 8pm and I have to unload my gear and prep for tomorrow... Thanks for checking in!

C

Day 4 of 9 - (two half days) Interiors and Product at Oodle Noodle

Today's post is going to be in chronological order.

6am: Wake up, got to bed last night at 1pm, so pretty early morning.  

7am-10am: Shoot commercial interiors for the public and catholic schools built by Bird / Graham. This has been a huge project for me, 18 schools across Alberta! The schools are slated to open on Monday, so we needed to get in today to shoot the last interior series for the Edmonton.

10:30am-11:02am: Stain wooden planks for the Oodle Noodle shoot at 1pm.

(eldon checking out the syling)
11:02am-12:04pm: Nap on the couch

12:05pm- woken up by the entourage Margo, Nat and Eva running around the studio prepping for their own things.



1:30pm -5:30pm Show up a few minutes late cause google maps sucks! Then shoot some great Asian food for Oodle Noodle with Eldon (creative director from Ignition Media).


(Because Oodle Noodle is going through a complete revamp and re branding they decided to have their dishes shot properly. My idea was to have an old Asian feel. I wanted to feel like the dishes were placed on old wooden tables (which is why I stained the wood before) with this light coming down from above like in an old Japanese temple. I didn't want it over styled, but I wanted the food to be "bathed" in light.

(Eldon and Sonny making sure that we are on track product wise)
The cool thing was Eldon really wanted the food shot fresh, right from the kitchen. So the owners literally cooked the food right there, placed in on the plate and we shot it right there in the kitchen.

(because the food was fresh we could actually sample it)

interiors of some schools...

6pm-7:30pm...download, post blog and Drive to Calgary to shoot tomorrow staring at 8am again!  Unfortunatly no time to process any of the images... but you get the idea.

Till tomorrow!
Enjoy!

Day 3 of 9

Day 3 of 9

Fashion spread for Derks magazine.

(I hate group photos... so why shoot a group entourage? Because I suck at them and shooting more its the only way to get better.. but im really happy with this one.)

Its 7:40pm and I have to be honest the end of Day 3 feels like the end of Day 8. Today began at 9arrival time to shoot at 11pm.

This shoot is for a bridal fashion magazine, but traditional bridal fashion is not really my thing. Im not into adding textures in post and calling it "fashion" either.

But when I heard Gay hooked up Kelly from the AB Ballet with this uber crazy (Elton John inspired gothic circus gone bad costume). Then I was really on board.

I wanted the shoot to feel like an Mature rated "Tim Burton version of the Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus"

I sketched some ideas last night after my other shoots and brought them to the location in hopes for approval. When I arrived I presented my sketches to Gay. She simply looked at me, smiled and said "Curtis do whatever you want, that's why be brought you on board."

(check out the sketch on the top right, pretty much exactly what I wanted)
We shot this series at Gay and Darryl Derks house. Although the Derks are cool people, I was a little leery a t first when I was told our location was their house.

(you dont see it here... but in my head im thinking WTF am I going to do with this group photo??)

When we arrived I quickly realized their "house" was actually a photographers play ground, complete with vintage furniture, gold painted walls, cool textures everywhere, huge ceilings, props and details around every corner and a back yard garden with slate flagstones!

(originally I was thinking treat him like a puppy...then this came up)
Darryl (also a photographer and owner of Derks formals) even had black out curtains to block light if you wanted to control the day light!

(This is without question my favorite picture)
It was seriously 100 times better than any studio I have shot in! They actually could have charged me a studio rental fee!

I ended up shooting 50%out side on a cool set built by Christina from ID Bohemia... Then I simply moved indoors to shoot against some of the gold walls in the house. I ended up using a complex outdoor light set up for me (two lights :))

Indoors on the golden walls I rocked my friend Curtis's Prophoto Ring flash. As soon as I saw the golden walls, I called Curtis T and asked to borrow his ring flash.

The walls screamed "photograph me with a ring flash" Then I sent my assistant off to pick it up from his place.

So heres what I came up with.

Day 4 of 9 begins tomorrow at 7am. Interiors - then on to product at 1pm.

Oh none of these pictures have been worked on in postproduction they are clean out of camera.

Enjoy!

C