Los Angeles trip ...

Breakfast with Lu, sushi with Betcee, dinner with Amarilla and Salim ... wardrobe shopping on Melrose Avenue ... more window shopping in Santa Monica ... checking out Courtney's new studio ...

Looking at new faces in agencies ...

exploring more of the window lights at the Custom Hotel ...

Making new friends ... intense ...

Casting call ... long drive home ... time flies ...

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Three days of shooting on the street with Kayla on her first shooting trip to LA ... she flies ... on heels ... in a long dress ... defying traffic ...

Beautiful ... sweet ... tall ... confident ... graceful ... unleashed ...

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This journey started the last day of May ... Kayla arrived in my studio for her first shoot ... a bit nervous ... tense ... unsure of what would happen ...

It took only 11 minutes to discover her affinity for the camera ...

She came back in June to shoot some more fun ...

Then July ...

Then the trip to Los Angeles ...

Watch ...

More images soon ...

A shoot with Elley S

As you can see ... Elley is a lot of fun ...

Loved working with her and I'm looking forward to do this again ;-)

Shoot was in Los Angeles, in Lucinda Wedge's old studio in the Ghetto ... loved that studio ... miss the size, the brick walls, the wooden floor and the window light ...

TGIF, October 3, 2008

Working a customer crisis, standard stuff for the last day of the week.  All is cool, what else is new ...l

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Retouched some images a couple of days ago for the print portfolio of Nicole from a shoot at Lu Wedge's Studio #405 in Los Angeles.  Make up and hair by Jessica Zweig.  Images are cropped for a 9 x 12" portfolio, pretty much standard print portfolio size for models.

Continued ...

Lucinda Wedge's Studio, September 15, 2008

The hall way in Lu's new studio is painted in red. and as one can imagine, this yields pretty dramatic lighting.  More so when combined with photo flash lighting.

The top image used incandescent lighting with a flash hair light (Quantum T5D-r) for backlighting while the lower image didn't use any backlight at all.

The model is Sarah Ellis once more, make-up by Amanda Rose.  

More pictures of this shoot showcasing different parts of the studio will be posted soon.

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The display quality of images on the this blog website is simply poor but it's about the only method I know to post.

If someone knows a better way to show these pics with less compression and larger size, shoot me an email.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Sarah Ellis ... intelligent, sweet, beautiful, dedicated, creative and patient ... works hard for each and every shot ... enough said ... no words needed for any professional photographer or model who ever worked with her.

Incredible expression, lips and eyes to die for ...

These images were taken in Lucinda Wedge's new studio #405 in downtown LA.  Make up artist, Amanda Rose.  Wardrobe picked up somewhere on Melrose Avenue ... close to Wasteland ... just couldn't resist this flowing dress.

The images on the left are all available light photography ... that's pretty much the majority of the work I've been shooting lately and the new studio has some very nice window light corners.  Plenty of texture to work this time and the studio is air conditioned.  Great ward robe and make up room.  Large windows, blinds with light control ... in short ... a pleasure to work in.

I'm a slow retoucher ... lol ...  it's going to take forever to work on these shoots ... not ...

Sarah is by now definitely the model I photographed more times than anyone else and Sarah keeps surprising me when it comes to expression and poise ... her enthusiasm for new angles knows no limits ... 

I owe her a T-shirt for the number of times she worked with me ...  lol

Looking forward to the next collaboration ... very soon I hope !

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I'm traveling to Europe to visit my mom.  Writing this from London during my layover for my next flight to Brussels.

My mom is in the hospital, ill.  We've know for a while that there's no holding back on the cancer anymore but she's gotten worse in a short amount of time because of a bout with pneumonia and a collapsed lung.  This could be very well our last visit.  Prognosis is very grim, we were all hoping she would make Christmas but this may not be the case anymore.

She sounded good on the phone the last couple of days but we're both looking forward to connect.

My BlackBerry doesn't work in  London and I'm sure the same happens in Brussels, just like last time.  I was on AT&T for the longest time until the company switched me over to Sprint.  That is a nightmare.  Not only does Sprint not cover my home location, I also have to deal with poor reception at the office where I have to switch to a landline on most days when a cell phone call comes in.  Sprint is so not worth it.

Luckily there are airport lounges with *paying* wireless connections ... no more freebies I guess ... T-mobile hotspots.

On my way here I was able to do some editing in camera of my last shoots with Betcee May, Tiana Hunter and Nicole Vitelli.  We did get a wonderful collection of editorial work to support my evolving  photography stories.  

The image on the left is from my "Two friends" story ... Betcee and Tiana being spontaneously goofy.

This shoot was a lot of editorial photojournalistic fun.  Watch out for more images from this series.

Nicole did a great job showcasing a lingerie and sexy dress collection.  No images yet but I'm happy with what I've seen in camera from this mostly available light shoot.

We worked in the new studio 405 from Lucinda Wedge in downtown LA.  Lovely location with a myriad of possibilities.  The roof access is nice, plenty of cool corners there also.  Looking forward shooting there again.

I'm living a roller-coaster.

Continued ...