The photoshoot below was done for my friend (Zas’) portfolio. He’s done a few ads (both print and on screen) but has yet to prepare himself a proper portfolio. The photoshoot was done at a friend’s residence sometime around late noon and we had it wrapped up within 3 hours. 99% of the photos were shot in black and white. There were some colored but I wasn’t too fond of the lack of contrast.

In all shots we only used one flash – direct! Waa who assisted me with the lighting did all the set up while I told him specificly what I wanted. I love you Waa! Lol. Before you start to think otherwise, Waa is one of my close friend and he’s a talented photographer himself.

By the way, I do have a behind-the-scene video of this photoshoot. Syazman dropped by with his D90 so he did take some videos. I have yet to see him since the shoot though. Sigh. Will check if its post-worthy later.

Before you open the pictures below or scroll down may I remind you that there are a lot of skin in these photos. So if you’re not comfortable with such pictures, please do not proceed.

While I didn’t get the chance to socialize with the group as I intended to, I had the chance to capture a few portraits and the one I’m most honored of, the portrait of Kukubesi himself. The gathering was held at Sg. Congkak – a waterfall area in the woods so I know there will be a lot of mud. Hence I really wanted a subject that was willing to get dirty in the mud and I was thrilled that Kukubesi was up to the idea. Not only that, to make the portrait even more unique and different, I needed it to have some sort of action and Kukubesi came up with the idea of spurting out sand. Gosh. So yes.. indeed he put sand in his mouth and spat it out.. resulting in the portrait below. A whole lot more was captured with his camera and you can check out a shot edited by him at his website (its the first picture).

Editing wise. I wanted textures in the final picture. Textures, hard, gritty and extremely contrasted. Not many are fond with this type of editing but what do you think? I’m pretty happy with it.

Believe it or not the picture above was the first shot. We then tried numerous times to perhaps capture it with a better lighting but couldn’t came close to this one.

A few more of my favorites are in the gallery.

First pic of my friend, my idol, the fashion photographer, Jay Ismail:

Picture was taken with mado’s 17-35mm 2.8 (a really good lens and hella expensive too). Ambient lighting.

Second is a picture of one of the models during a photoshoot that was on-going at Jay’s studio. Gosh. Someone please remind me her name.

Next up is a picture of my friend Naguib taken in a parking lot on hour way home after Bunkface’s gig at Laundry. Trying out with textures in this shot.

A quick portrait of Jipi (Pesawat) just before the press conference yesterday for Twisties Bingit – a reality tv show that hopes to discover new band in the local music scene. Pesawat is the featured band and also carries the main theme of the show.

The next 2 portraits are photos of a kid I took at the Mocca concert which was held on Saturday night. I absolutely love their happy-go-lucky songs. Go listen to them if you haven’t! So anyway this kid was randomly walking around with his little guitar and obviously enjoying the attention of the audience who were ohhh, ahhh and awww-ing at him.

The kid watches as Yuna performs during the opening act.

The same shot of him but this time with a lot more foreground element. I love the textures of the tiles. As I didn’t want to disturb him with the flash, I pushed the ISO all the way up to ISO 6400. Nikon is not that good at handling high ISO (I admit) but there’s always noise removal plugins you can use.