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.

And a few more from the same little wander round the park...

All shot on my trust canon 1ds mkIII.

Ambient light using my 70-200mm at 200mm f4 60th

Total Neglect!!

Canon Hill Park Dec 2010
Originally uploaded by Kilgore 626

Well I really don't know what to say. In amongst everything my blog has been totally forgotten and i'm ashamed to say I haven't been updating it at all!!


Its a little early for new years resolutions currently, however im making a pledge to update this a lot more for next year and there after...


With that in mind here is a quick update.



Here in sunny Birmingham we have been experiencing our coldest winter for years. So with that in mind and the sun shining yesterday morning I went for a walk around the very cold and frozen Canon hill park right in the center of Birmingham to see what I could see......

Templeton Peck - O2 Academy

Well last night's gig was a little trickier than usual! It was the first time I'd even been into the Academy 3. I was a little apprehensive as the last Academy 3 was a tiny venue with what might have well have been candles for light, making dynamic action shots really difficult to capture.  Needless to say the new Academy 3 was somewhat more illuminated however still quite small. However worse than the lack of light there was no designated photo pit meaning that I had to jostle for position in amongst the crowd, not an easy feat with all your camera gear on your back.

Anyway overall im pretty pleased with the shots despite the difficulties encountered. Shooting for Laney Amps, both the lead singer and guitarist use them so shots of them were crucial.

check out the bands website here

Hope you guys like.....

Rob & Jenny's Wedding

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of shooting Rob & Jenny's Wedding. The wedding took place Jennys parents house in not so sunny Northampton.  Typically the weather leading up to their wedding had been horrendous. In the week prior we had thunder, heavy rain and hail storms not bad for July. Thankfully other than one very heavy rain storm early in the day the wedding was largely dry.

Given that the days leading up to the wedding day had been so grey and overcast I decided to take along my trusty Bowens 750 gemini's and power packs. All of the bride and groom shots were taken with one head and a large ish softbox, all around f11 at 125th. The group shots used two heads.

Here are a few shots, I hope you enjoy....

Flowers!!!

Ive been asked this week to take some shots of flowers for a client. Specifically they were looking for some stock style images of single interesting flowers. I'm assuming perhaps for use on cards or something of that nature. Having never done anything like this I thought I'd have a trial run before committing and saying I'll do the job. So I set up a mini studio on my dining table and gave it a whirl.


Here are a few  shots followed by the behind the scenes images! All shot with my Canon 1ds MkIII with my 70-200 2.8 and 2 x Bowens 500 Watt heads. A small soft box camera left and a wide angle reflector camera right for highlight detail. After playing with the flowers for a little while I fancied shooting the vase and seeing what I could do with that!

Pretty pleased with the results, not bad considering I used black towels and an old sheet as my black scoop!! I'm definitely going to give some other still life objects ago!

This shot below illustrates the basic setup, for this group shot I placed the reflect glass behind to try and capture a nice reflection, The saucepan was just used to prop it up a little higher ;-) The white piece of paper was used to bounce light back up underneath the flowers.

I didn't seem to take many behind the scenes shots of the flowers but the images of the vase's were shot with almost identical light setup!