Ena Photography » photoshoot

Behind The Scenes: Hanneke

Ena — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:50:40 +0000

Sometimes I do wish I had a video cam to record the behind-the-scenes and share it with you guys. But for now, I guess having a friend to get some shots will do Thanks Mado for the pics! And once again thanks Jay for the studio!

Hanneke – The Monochrome Series

Ena — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:24:42 +0000

Hannake has beautiful freckles and it would do no justice unless the pictures are in monochrome.

Hanneke

Ena — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:13:31 +0000

A huge thanks to the team involved that made this happen; Nik Erwan for his beautiful designs, Vee for his styling creativity, Aleng for the makeup, Jay for his direction and funny antics, Mado for the personal assistance and of course the talented model, Hanneke. This photoshoot wouldn’t have made it if for not the contributions of the people above – shooting fashion is NOT a one man’s job.

We took approximately 6 hours from start to finish. Not much time is spent on makeup as I thought it would be, just because Hanneke’s skin was gorgeous as it is. We love her freckles so much that it wasn’t necessary to cover them up. We went through 5 outfits, with the final outfit being shot outdoors instead of indoors. Of course I would prefer for the entire photoshoot to be outdoors, but with the time constraints of finding a location and plus the heat (and haze) in KL, it was more practical for the shoot to be in the studio instead.

Enjoy the pictures. I’ll keep on adding through out this week so do come back!

Update 1: Added the MJ-tribute photos! I also included a shot of lighting setup.

Update 2: Added the photos with the turban!

Update 3: And..finally…added the long dress photos

Kibas Hanneke!

Ena — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:04:31 +0000

Tiring tiring Sunday. *faints*

Vic @ Lake Garden

Ena — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:41:44 +0000

Finally had my camera clicking again. After all the gigs these past few weeks its good to be returning back to my favorite disicpline – portraitures. The session was held last Sunday and the day began with brunch (or more like late brunch) at Vic’s place. With our tummy’s filled, we headed to the only place I could think for a portraiture session that’s nearby AND that I would know, no one would be bothering us – Lake Garden. While I don’t remember much about Lake Garden as a kid but I did grew up going to Lake Club for swimming. I’m no longer a member there but I do head there some time for lunch with colleagues – p/s: they have delicious banana fritters!

So I picked a spot which would turn out to be the only spot for the day which was in a shade, surrounded by big trees, blanketed my dried leaves and rather comfy I would say. As I attempt to set up my umbrella set, I realized that the umbrella adapter which I had borrowed from Mado was too small for the umbrella set that I had. Oh well, it was natural light all the way then.

My first few shots were in color. *Nope*… just didn’t had the mood for it. Switched to monochrome…ah…much much better. A reader questioned, isn’t it better to first shoot in color and then only convert it to B&W later? Yep, that’s definitely right. But the only reason I was shooting monochrome right from the camera was due to sheer laziness of editing it later on. lol. By right, I should be shooting in Raw format and then converting it during post-processing. Firstly, I barely shoot on Raw ever since I switched to the D300 (the files are huge compared to the D70s I had before) and secondly I find it easier to pick my photos in the format of its end result – i.e. I know I wanted the photos to be B&W and hence photo selections were much easier for me if the photos are in B&W rather than in color. Am I making any sense here? I hope so.

D700 Studio Portraiture Test

Ena — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:34:06 +0000

Had a chance to try out the Rashdan’s D700 at Kabir’s studio. My models of the day would be two of my friends, Waa and Isma. Lighting setup is pretty simple. I’m always inclined to shoot with one light source due to getting used to just having just one umbrella during my portrait-shooting days in the States.

Isma Hanum – The Shoot That Never Was

Ena — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:05:13 +0000

This is the case of a certain stylist not showing up after me, the talent and the rest of the crew waited for what…3 hours? 4 hours? I was approached by Isma sometime last year to have her portfolio taken. After a lot of postponing due to conflicting schedules, we finally settled on a weekend in late January to have the photoshoot. Now, to cut it short. We canceled the shoot because the stylist did not turn up. Pft. I won’t mention who but I do appreciate at least a call or text message to say you can’t turn up because of an emergency right?

During the few hours of waiting, I decided to prep up Isma by warming her up in front of the camera. Below are a few of the selected shots, which I find tells a certain character about Isma. Oops. Forgot to mention that Isma is an budding actor. Hence the portfolio was intended to be headshots of her, depicting her and the character that she may portray.

So no photo shoot. What did we ended up doing? Me, Jay, Kabir, Isma and her friend ended up catching a movie at Cineleisure. lol

You can now catch Isma on Ghost Season 2 which airs on 8TV every Sunday at 10.30pm. If you missed the show, you can always head over to 8tv.com.my

M to the Madu at Bangkok Jazz

Ena — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:19:28 +0000

Hunny Madu, Bangkok Jazz, April 3 2009.

Coming Soon.

So it takes me to be sick and in bed to finally edit the photos. There are few more I but edited the ones I like best. I was fortunate to have Mado assisting me in this shoot – he gave a lot of suggestions in terms of the lighting. In most shots, we had 2 light sources; a flash mounted on to umbrella, and placed to the left of Hunny and another flash (dialed down to a few stops) pointed directly to Hunny from her right side.

In the first shot above, I tried to emulate the exact same shot that I took of her 2 years back at the exact same spot – compare it with this photo.

Enjoy the rest!

Cleo’s Most Eligible Bachelor 2009 Winner – Henry Golding

Ena — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:31:56 +0000

In conjunction with Henry winning the title as Cleo’s Most Eligible Bachelor for 2009, I thought I post up some pictures of him from the archive. Yes, this is from the archive – despite that I have still tons of Henry’s pictures which I have not edited. The photoshoot was done back in mid 2008 on a sunny Sunday. We started from Bangsar, to Ampang, and finally at Pavilion, KL. It was an exhausting yet relaxing shoot because it was just me, the camera and Henry – no lighting set, no stylist, no art directors and especially no one pushing us on the timing.

I think it was just a two months ago that I met Henry over lunch when he mentioned that he’s entering the Cleo’s Bachelor contest. Fast forward, and looks like he got the title! Wohooo! *ecstatic for no reason* Congrats, mate! Hope this opens up to more exciting opportunity in the future!

Aly – The Hair Model?

Ena — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:08:07 +0000

Has Aly turned into a model? The insider news coming to a blog near you. Lol!

Check back soon!

I just realized how inconsistent I can be with my editing styles. Sigh. Let’s just move on to the story:

It was a casual Wednesday evening at the office when I received a phone call from the bestie. She wondered if I could accompany her to a photoshoot in which she was pulled as the model. “Ha?”, was my reaction. (Why do I feel like I’m writing an essay? Ok. Ignore ignore!) Since when did Aly model for other people other than me, I jokingly said to a friend. (Ok.. I’m definitely writing as if this is a kindergarden story book!). Joking yeah… As far as I remembered, she has only modeled once for a magazine article on reducing the chubbiness of a face using makeup.. and that was back in 2006.

I took my time to freshen myself at home and ate dinner before I made my way to the studio owned by Asfar in Wangsa Maju. Not knowing anyone in the room, I made myself comfortable at the reception area with Aly’s hubby and catch up on what both of us has been up to. Well actually it wasn’t really catching up – it was more of us cracking up on Ikram’s outtakes for the 6 degrees project (I had my laptop with me). 30 minutes passed….1 hour passed…2 hour passed. What the heck is taking the make-up artist (MUA) so long?! So after 2 hours I walked in and there I found the MUA taking her own sweet time to curl Aly’s hair with an iron while blow-drying in between. Did I mention she refused to apply any hair products? Of course the curls won’t stick! Duh! I swore if Aly didn’t give me her disapproval look, I would have just grabbed the hair iron and curled Aly’s hair myself. And just when I thought the hair styling is over, she attempted to fix the already-old-looking Aly make-up look. *smacks forehead* Ok.. see.. this is what you get when you’re bestfriend is a make-up artist – you tend to be a perfectionist. And while I don’t have the skillful hands of Aly, I know well enough that the MUA was making it worse. She had like..what… 4 or 5 brushes in her hands? Even she herself was confused which one was the washer for the eyelids, the highlighter for the brow bone or the blender (blender? lol. a blending brush is what I mean). I think I was more agitated and annoyed than Aly was. Haha.

Finally the shoot began at 10.45pm (!). Aly’s curl, as expected, has been reduced back to her straight hair (no hair products remember) even on the first frame. Wait, I guess I should remind everyone again that I wasn’t the photographer. The task of shooting for the night goes to Nazim Zafri – a fellow photographer whom I first met through Syahrin during a trip to Indonesia in 2007. I was merely on the sidelines, snapping some pictures with the camera set to a high ISO of 800. I didn’t want to disturb the shoot, so shooting with a trigger is not an option. Hmm. If I can recall, we had 2 soft boxes and 1 hair light, though not all were used at the same time.

Sometime during the shoot, I sneaked in a few shots with Aly as Nazim fixes the lighting. Hehe.. Hey. Once I get a good shot or two, that’s good enough for me. Here I present the 3 photos that I’ve picked and edited. The first one was fairly soft (i.e. not sharp) for beauty editing. Hence you will observe a notable difference in the details between the first picture and the last two photos.