Tag Archives: photoshoot - Page 4

Aly – The Hair Model?

Posted by on March 29, 2009 No comments

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.

Aly-Hair1 Aly-Hair2 Aly-Hair3

Ismaliana

Posted by on February 3, 2009 5 comments

This will be a quick one because it’s 4am!

This afternoon I had the pleasure of shooting two of my friends for their personal (and my) personal portfolio. The lighting set-up is very simple. 1 SB-600 through an umbrella amd one SB-800 behind the model as hair-light. I will go into more details about it later but here’s one of the shots.

Ismaliana1

Please check this post back again as I will include more pictures and commentaries with regards to the shoot.

The whole idea of shooting Isma is not something new. If you’ve seen my earliest work (which I doubt it), you would recognize her as one of the models during my first fashion-inspired shoot. Believe or not, that was back in 2006; Three years down the road, we are now working at the same corporation…which technically means I see her at least five days in a week. Nonetheless, the opportunity only came about on Monday when she so happen to be hanging out at the location of my photo shoot with Ewan (Let’s just say its suppose to be a photoshoot for Ewan, but it became a photoshoot for Ewan and Isma – separately – not both – don’t get any ideas please :P

Lighting setup, as mentioned above is pretty simple, I had a SB-600 mounted on the brolly (white umbrella) and a SB-800 placed behind the model for hair-light. Due to my excitement, it slipped my mind to take a behind-the-scenes photo to share it with you guys. :S

Isma 2

In this first photo I had Isma sitting on the table. We were trying the Hunchback of Notre Dame pose but we didn’t quite nail the pose. I have a feeling such pose is only achievable with a very thin or lanky model on a standing position – definitely not while sitting down!

Isma 3

Now this second photo is really one of those accidental shot. Recall that I had placed the SB-800 behind the model for the hair-light. When she stood to pose next to the blinds, I had forgotten to move ihe flash accordingly. Thus when I hit the shutter, this is what I get – flare-o-mania. The lighting on the face of the unedited shot was kind of dark, as the umbrella was more towards the right side of the frame. To solve this, I bumped up the exposure and dodge her face in Photoshop.

Typical of most of my portraits, the pictures will go through the certain level of beauty editing. And almost always, I will change the final color tone of the picture. To illustrate this, here’s a before and after of the first shot above.

Isma - Before & After

Hope that gives a mini insider view of a portraiture shoot. Feel free to drop a comment, suggestion or query if you have any!