Dans Ghia

2011 also was the year of the Ghia!! Quite a few of you know that I have a love for all things vintage Volkswagen.  A good friend Dan and a keen amateur photographer had finished getting his gorgeous and crazy low Karrman Ghia on the road.

We had talked for a while about shooting it and now that it was finished a date booked and the shoot was on. I had been gathering some bits for a make shift car rig for a while and by the end of September we had all we needed and were ready to give it a try. The plan was to shoot for two days, first off trying static shots with various light setups and the second day to give the rig ago and try some tracking shots.

Here are the results I hope you like cheers Dave

This is the first location we tried.  tucked underneath a bridge in Coventry.

Two 600 w/s profoto heads either end of the car with wide angle reflectors.

Triggered with Profoto Air

Shot on my Hasselblad H4D

 

Behind the scenes from above.

  

Same light setup as above for these shots however on the last one, soft boxes were used rather than bare reflectors. Purple hue added in post.

 

Day 2 and couldn't resist a shot under this tree before we tried the rig shots

 

 

And here is the result of lots and lots of trial and error! We tried first with our rig made out of an aerial pole, whilst this was plenty strong enough it was no where near rigid enough. During the long exposures there was way too much blur on the car caused by movement of the camera. 

 

This is our first rig, single aerial pole, various clamps and suction cups. It did work but was very tricky to get a clear shot.

 

And this is the final rig we made which we was what was used in the shot above. Just as we were about to give up Dan suggested we use the tripod. It works perfectly albeit there is a lot to clone out after!!

Phillip & Nicola's Big Day!

I also had the pleasure this year of shooting Phillip and Nicola's beautiful wedding at Hagley Hall in Stourbridge. It was a slightly tempestuous day in June, a bit of of rain, a bit of glorious sunshine and a lot of wind made for some very dramatic shots.

There are a few more shots of my facebook page www.facebook.com/davidhallphoto please click that like button if you like what you see here :D

Here are some of my favorites from their big day......

This shot is probably my favorite from the day. Shot on the back lawn of the Hall with a 60 x 60 cm softbox boomed up high by my trusty assistant!

 

 

I'm taking bookings for 2012 & 2013 so if your engaged and looking for a photographer ploease do get in touch and we can have a chat about your big day. My mobile is 07813 601 168 or email me David - info @ davidhallphoto.com ( without the spaces )

cheers

David

The Ragdolls

Well its been an un-excusable amount of time since my last post! So I not going to try other than to say Im sorry and have made a new years resolution to at least update my blog for 2012 at least once a month! You may hold me to that!!

Anyway as 2011 comes to a close i've been busy planning shoots for the year ahead which made me think of the blog and distinct lack of posts that I have made this year. With this in mind over the next few days I shall post up some selected photographic highlights of 2011

One of the most exciting things to happen this year is the formation of my new photographic partnership with a  good friend of mine Alex Styles. The ragdolls will by a by word for photographic excellence, creativity, passion and fun :D

Here are some shots from a a shoot with the beautiful Georgia Coultas and Zena Giambrone.

Photography the Ragdolls
Videography Ed Styles
Hair & Makeup - Zens Bridal

The brief was basically to shoot some beauty images, super clean, dynamic shots for Zens Bridal makeup portfolio.

Shot on a Hasselblad H4D

Profoto Acute B2 pack with white beauty dish & Reflector

 

The video from the shoot can be found here....

http://vimeo.com/22752255

Comments always welcome.

cheers

Dave

Monika

Well its been anther very busy few weeks! Time seems to just pass me by. I certainly haven't had enough of it to be updating the blog! I am going to be making a concerted effort over the coming week to update all that's been happening shoot wise with me.

So first off was a shoot with a wonderful model called Monika. Her website can be found here http:www.monika-t.com

This was going to be another test with the Hassleblad, putting it through its paces and practicing with Phocus its proprietary software.

We did the shoot in Alex's studio. Here are a few shots from the day. With these first images I wanted a really casual feel, the kind of thing you might see on the wall of H&M or Forever 21.





The above shots were taken with the H4D, 80mm 2.8 with a Bowens 500w/s head and beauty dish, with a reflector for a little fill.



A large softbox above camera left, shot almost wide open at 5.6. A really cool feature of the H4D is the ability to flash sync higher than 250th of a second. This was shot at 700th/s allowing for shallow depth of field with studio flash.

These next couple of shots used a couple of rim lights to add some highlight definition and a little separation from the back ground. The rims were another pair of 500w Bowens heads with wide angle reflectors with some diffusion material neatly held in place with elastic bands and gaffa tape ;-)





And lastly from the shoot, a shot with a ring flash. A deliberately hard light shot.  It has a distinct ring flash feel to it. Hard fall off shadow because of the proximity to the backdrop.



As usual thanks for looking and any comments or feedback gratefully received.

cheers

Dave

THE HASSI HAS LANDED!!!!

Well there has been some very exciting news on planet Hall in the last few weeks. My shiny new camera from the boys and girls over at Hasselblad has finally arrived after a very agonising 5 week wait!

Needless to say, I was super excited and managed to take the new toy to a shoot and immediately give it a test drive!

A good friend of mine had a shoot booked in for a Jewelery designer, who's items of jewelery were made from animal bones and other strange and unusual animal parts!

I had a quick word with the designer and she was more than happy for me to take a few shots with the new beast! Now I'd like to add that I wouldn't normally gate crash a friends photo shoot like this, but given I knew both the designer, photographer and model I figured no one would mind too much, plus they'd get some great shots in super high resolution!

I was blown away with the image quality! Below is a screen grab from capture one showing two images one shot with the Hassleblad and the other a Nikon D700, Although not identical they were shot with an almost identical position and similar crop. Both enlarged to 100% and well the results clearly speak for them selves!

 

Here's a quick peak from the shoot! Lots more Hassi images coming over the coming few days, once I have had a chance to sort and edit.

Thanks for looking guys!

Project Ade!!

On Saturday I had the pleasure of shooting my old friend Ade. We have known each other since we were a lot younger (cough). If I say how long it will start to make me feel really old!

We have chatted on numerous occasions over the years about organising a shoot together, and although I have shot him a couple of times in the past relating to bands he has played in, we have never got round to doing a one on one. As with many an idea they get rearranged, postponed or cancelled but this time thankfully we made a plan and stuck to it!

At this point I'd like to just say a massive thanks to another good friend of mine Alex who very generously gave me the keys to his studio and let us cause havoc in there all day on Saturday. Check his website and blog out here www.alexstyles.co.uk. Cheers mate it was much appreciated.

Set up was fairly simple, Bowens 500w with beauty dish as the main light and another two heads with grids attached as rims. Shot against a black paper roll. Using of course my trusty work horse the Canon 1ds MkIII

Here are a few from the shoot. There will be a few more once I have a bit more time to edit them.


Please feel free to comment, any feedback is always gratefully received.

Thanks for looking

Dave

GTR - Heaven

Well a few months back I heard word that a good friend of mine had bought a brand new Nissan GTR. Being a bit or a car fanatic I instantly got on the the phone and started to arrange a shoot of said automobile!

I teamed up with another friend of mine Nick to location scout and plan the day.

He drives a Subaru Impreza so we decided that before Shaun and the star of the day showed up we would practice some lighting layouts to see what we can get and how well they work.

So first shot of the day was this one below! I thought the stacked coal would be a great dynamic background for the Subaru. The day was only just starting and already the weather was conspiring against us, the rain had set in and the wind was picking up!

Ignoring the fact that it was now officially full on rain Nick and I proceeded to plan the lighting setup by putting out the light stands where we wanted the various heads. For this shot we had 2 x 750w and 2 x 500w Bowens Gemini's, plus 4 or 5 hot shoes if required.

Excuse the crude lighting plan but you get the idea....

 In this actual shot we gave up on the rim light at the rear as we kept getting really bad glare that no matter where we position the light we couldn't get rid of. Taken on my canon 1ds MkIII f8 at 125th. Triggered with pocket wizard mini and flex's.



I'm pretty pleased with this. Not bad for my first ever real attempt at properly lighting a car on location. Ideally we needed more juice. 1000w upwards would have made the easier and given greater flexibility. Compromises had to be made with regard aperture and exposure due to light output.

So moving on and the star of the show arrived the brand new Nissan GT-R in gun bolt grey.

We attempted a few shots in a slightly more sheltered area of the location as the wind had really picked up and the 2m softbox was literally blowing itself and the the poor person holding it away.

Unfortunately before we had had a real chance to setup disaster struck, I very stupidly left the boom and 2m soft box unattended for a few minutes, the wind picked up and whisked the boom, soft box and light away smashing the flash tube.

So there isnt really anything to show from this part of the shoot unfortuantley. We took a few but they weren't really coming out how we had hoped now that we were a main light down.

We tried to re-light using what we had left and hot shoes but the light just wasn't strong enough.
so here are a couple post traumatic accident! 

All was not lost however we decided to try some boom shots, so we packed down and re-setup for some tracking shots.

Again my first attempt at these. For these shots we used Nicks D300 as he has a remote timer which proved essential to avoid against camera wobble!

The setup is a all homemade from various suction clamps and G-clamps bought online for about £150 all bolted onto a decorators pole!!

 

And here are the final shots from the day, lots of trial and error but really pleased with the outcome!!

My Old Girl....

Well although technically this didn't start out as an exercise for work purposes I have managed to pass on the images and they are now going into to print as advertising shots for Bromsgrove Auto Trimmers where the old girl has recently been re-trimmed.

For those that don't know a great deal about me i'm passionate about old Volkswagen's. The love affair started when I was really little, my older cousin passed his test and his first car was a 70's beetle. Having been taken for a spin in it I was hooked. Lots of drooling and fantasising over old Volkswagen's later, I am now the proud owner of the bus you see below. She is a 1961 23 window samba imported from New York approx 9 years ago as a complete wreck. Rust on top of rust, holes everywhere and in need of some serious TLC. Roll on a few years and Matt at Smiths of Cornwall http://www.smiths-vw-repair-cornwall.co.uk/  waved his magic restoration wand and Jemima as we affectionately call her was re-born.

The sun was shining just before Christmas and having just had the trim finished I couldn't resist jumping in her and going to take some shots. All taken on my trusty 1ds MkIII with natural light.

There are a few more on flickr if you wish to see more.