Glamour Photography

Remember the wonderful images from the Modeling Portfolio Blog - Photoshoot with the Best, back in November 11th, 2006? Well, here it is again! Bigger, better and more wonderful models from the far reaches of San Francisco Bay Area, reaching as far as Los Banos, California in the south; to Stockton, way off in the East Bay; and Oakland, up north. Congregating in our usual studio for our 3rd Modeling Portfolio shoot.

Back with us this round are Paul and Ken (our wonderful guest photographer). We started as early as 2pm, jammed the studio with music, crackers, cheese, water, soda, lingeries piled up the height of Mt Fuji, and of course, shoes. We started our setup, the weather outside threatening rain but it looks somewhat clear for now so I had lights setup outside for the first shoot with Tiffany and Danielle. Unfortunately for me, Maysa, one of our wonderful models can only stay till 5pm. After she shot with Paul and Ken, I didn't get any leftover time to shoot with her. Major sigh.

Danielle (shown on the right) and Tiffany (shown on the very top of this entry) drove all the way down from the East Bay. Danielle is really pretty and has one of the sweetest personalities I know. Apparently, her parents seem real modernized and have accounts on myspace. Tiffany has great modeling skills and knows how to pose. She swings from one pose to another with ease. Both are fantastic! I lighted most of those shots with Tiffany and Danielle using a flash outside the window. Soon after, rain started pouring down by the bucket. I then realized that my flash unit is still outside. Almost destroying or worse, electrocuting myself, I moved the entire flash unit back indoors totally drenched. Stupid way to possibly zap the session away. Ouch.

Just about that time, Jessica started prancing around me. I grabbed her right away to do image composites!!! Yeah baby, composites? What the hell are composites, you ask?! Let me first tell you what they are NOT.

They are NOT cut & paste of one image to another

They are NOT a simple graphics designers dream to make an image look good

They are NOT only for advertising and commercials

They are certainly NOT for the faint of heart or the so called photography purist who claim that photography is only to capture the moment

They definitely are NOT for anyone who thinks that composites are easy

In fact, composites require significantly more work to put together than a straight out studio shoot. They require a lot of forethoughts, skilled post processing abilities as well as lighting knowledge to pull off. You need a keen eye on details, great lighting knowledge, understanding of color theory, good photography & photoshop skills as well as masking ability; all of these are key requirements to create composites. Unfortunately, that's also the pitfall of composites. Having one person knowing all these abilities are extremely rare. This is also why many composites are badly done. This give composites a bad name. Composites, if done right,

Saves you a LOT of money (instead of paying the model(s) + photographer + MUA + stylist + everyone else) 3X of their time and hourly rate to shoot in an secluded or exotic location, they can shoot on location in the studio and composite your desired background to fit the style.

Saves you a LOT of time (saving time & money are the primary reasons why ads and commercial spaces uses composites a lot and that's why people think commercial ads as the only people doing composites)

Choices of background grows exponentially

Allows a stronger pre-visualized idea to come to existence. Expand your skills, horizons and ideas.

After the above two composites were done, I then lined up Jessica for a shoot by the fireplace where she totally flared up as the goddess in lingeries. Gosh, I think I almost had a SHC (Spontaneous human combustion) phenomenon when I was shooting her, made it worse since it was next to the fireplace.

- Michael Soo

Work-a-Scene of Popular Photography & Imaging Magazine

Work-a-Scene is a series of monthly articles in Popular Photography & Imaging that teaches a photographer on how to fix a situation during shoot. For example, taking multiple HDR images and fix them in Photoshop do not count, whereas, changing the contrast or using a filter does. I wrote a total of 6 articles for Work-a-Scene in 2006, 3 of them has been accepted, two of them do not fit the category well and the other one may need more work). None of them were not published due to some shuffling of articles. So, I figured that I'll just lay off from doing more of them until they start to get published. Then one of the article got published in the January 2007 issue (page 52). It's about using aperture to create starburst effect.

Senior Editor, Pete Kolonia of Popular Photography sent me an email two weeks ago stating that their Work-the-Scene articles that I have been writing for them has mostly been published (in the publishing world, magazines get prepped to be published at least 3-4 months in advanced) and they need new material, and they need it NOW. "Sure!", I said, let me run to the wand shop in Diagon Alley first.

After a week or so of sitting around being a bum cracking my brains off for a concept and trying to schedule session with a Angelina Rika, whom I've shot before, I figured that Angelina isn't really that serious about modeling. Right at the same time, I got a message from Libby over myspace. Libby probably got my info from Paul Ferradas. I absolutely loved her images that Paul took of her a while back by Alviso. Libby is a natural beauty, gorgeous and has a great personality. We booked off a time for a shoot in a within a day or so. One of the fastest, come-shoot-with-me-right-away type of request. She got all excited and we're off to a great start.

I decided that we should shoot in 2 locations in the South Bay, around the region of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose downtown, maybe more depending on the mood and situation. The first location is shot for the magazine and in order to compensate her for her time, I'll shoot her a strong portfolio in the 2nd location, a rooftop.

You can find the images in the Fashion and Glamour Gallery.

- Michael Soo