'Client' - Musicians Portfolio

I was contacted by a music student at UCLAN to see if I would be able to produce some studio images of him and his drumkit. The images were to be used for self-publicity in both web and print format.


After discussing what he required, we agreed that we would need to use the infinity curve for the shots  in order to be able to fit the kit in and still get wide angle shots. Dynamic lighting was needed as he didn't want a flat white background and wanted to make things more dynamic by introducing shadow into the shot to give the images more depth. After some experimentation with different lights I used the combination of a large softbox and a set of barn doors. The barn doors were acting as the main light while the softbox provided a bit of fill. I shot at f8 to allow some depth of field and the fill light was set two stops lower at f4.


Mikey wanted to use different outfits throughout the shoot and we did a lot of action shots while he was drumming as well as more staged shots. We repeated this for each outfit.

The shoot was successful and I produced the images that he wanted. I think the images work well and will look good in print an online. The dramatic shadows add impact and the combination of 'live action' and staged shots ensured that Mikey had a good selection of images from which to choose his final ones. Once he had chosen the final images from each set I processed these in CS4 and provided him with full-size and web-size versions of each image.

Here's the emails from Mikey:

"Hello Chris,

I am writing to see if it would be possible to book you to do a photo shoot for me to aid in my professional development. I am a musician and I need some high quality images taken for use in promoting myself in various areas of my work.

If possible I'd like to have a blank room with just myself and my drum present in the pictures as well as dynamic lighting. As for the pictures themselves I'd like some catching me playing the drums in various outfits and some shots that are more artistic, posing by the drum kit.

Thank you, Look forward to hearing from you.

Michael J. Keefe

(michael.j.keefe@hotmail.co.uk)"

"Hello Chris,

I have received the final edits of the pictures from the shoot and I am very happy with the results, they look great! It's been a pleasure working with you, I'll be sure to contact you for future shoots.

Thank you, all the best

Michael J. Keefe

(michael.j.keefe@hotmail.co.uk)"



Website

I have just published a website on weebly. Weebly is quite straightforward to use and will provide an online presence for me until I have get a  site designed from the ground up for me to showcase my photography.

In the meantime, this one will be ok to give me a web presence and now it's online I just need to get some more stuff added to it.

http://chrishorgan.weebly.com/

Research

In order to see what the standard of work in this genre is like I have got a new book to help me with my research. Free postage and and a price reduction from Amazon make this book a bargain buy as it features work by well-known photographers and designers in the area of latex fashion.

According to Amazon, this book is  ... "A stunning collection of images featuring latex fashion from some of the most interesting and cutting-edge international labels and drawing on the trendy, the fashionable and the erotic. More than 60 photographers have teamed up to portray the unique creations and clothes of designers such as Atsuko Kudo (designer for Lady Gaga, Eva Mendes, Kate Moss and more) and Berlin label Très Bonjour (designer for Katy Perry)."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Latex-Fashion-Photography-Miki-Bunge/dp/3936709467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322323993&sr=8-1

As well as featuring a range of stunning inspirational images, this book also provides a directory featuring numerous photographers, latex designers and outlets complete with links to their website. This has been very useful for looking at the work of other practitioners and for determining the current standard in this genre. The book also features the work of Julian Kilsby, who I was lucky enough to have a lighting workshop with at the start of the semester.

Monitor Calibration



In order to ensure that my images look correct to clients and also that they print out correctly I have been having to ensure that my monitor is correctly calibrated.  It's amazing how you get used to looking at a monitor and can't see how it goes out of adjustment so I now set a monthly reminder to recalibrate both my main PC and my laptop. When the reminder pops up I just attach the calibration device to the screen and let it run for about 20 minutes and after it's finished I get to view a 'before' and 'after'. Usually the 'before' looks very unsaturated and quite a cool colour and it's strange how you don't tend to notice this when you're working in Photoshop.

Although the Spyder is not cheap (around £100) it ensures that my images are always colour correct.

Self-promotion

Having to write your contact details on a Post-It note can look a bit unprofessional so I've found this site for business cards. They look and feel professional and are a good price too. They come in regular size and mini size, which are about half the width of a regular card. The good thing is that you can use as many images as you like for your cards and also have a logo/contact info printed on the back.
http://uk.moo.com/

'Client' - Demarchellier Inspired Fashion Shoot

I was contacted by a local model to see if I would be interested in a mutually beneficial Portfolio shoot. As this would provide another opportunity to develop my practice I agreed to do this. The Model had specific ideas as to the kind of images she was looking for and I asked her to send me some examples so that I could ensure that I produced the kind of images she was looking for. The images she sent to me were from Demarchellier's 'Acid Reign' shoot for Vogue and these provided the initial inspiration. His images incorporated bright, bold colours, directional lighting and shadows.

http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/trends/2009-spring-summer/acid-reign/gallery

Rather than simply try and recreate the images we took the elements that we liked the most - bright colours, shadows, directional lighting - and worked out a set around these. We shot two sets, one on the red background and one on the purple as we wanted to ensure that we had lots of bright backgrounds in the images. The model chose outfits that would give a colourful contrast to the red background and would provide a simple complement to the purple one.

We did not try to simply recreate Demarchelier's 'doorway' lighting but we wanted to ensure that the model was framed with light so I used a combination of hard and soft light. Barn Doors were used to create harsh directional lighting and these worked well to bring out the colours of the first outfit while still providing shadows and framing. A small Softbox was then used as fill. A setting of f8 was used on the Barn Doors and the Softbox was set at f4 as this was just to provide fill.

The last set was based around this image and was shot on the infinity curve. The same lighting was used for this set.

Here's our versions - we did colour and black & white versions but I think the black & white ones work the best.



The Model and I were both pleased with how the images turned out and we feel we have created a vibrant set of images to enhance our portfolios.  The images will be used both online and in print format and I supplied Maz with retouched images at web-size and high resolution ones for print.

Although the shoot went really well, it was a bit of a challenge to get the shots. A cheap CF Card Reader had damaged one of my cards but I was unaware of this before I tried to use it in my cameras. The result was a bent pin in the CF slot in my 5D MKII and my 50D backup camera.

As I had the studio booked from 8am-11am, it was too early to get a replacement camera from stores and I wouldn't have time to sort out another camera mid way through the shoot so I had to look at other options. I had sent of my MKII for repairs but still had my 50D. I downloaded the latest version of Canon's EOS Utility and this enable me to work tethered to my laptop. This made working quite difficult as the USB lead was quite short and I had to position the laptop near enough to get the shots we needed. One benefit though was that we could both see the images appear on screen to check that they were turning out ok and also the model could check her poses were working well and that we had got the images we needed before moving onto the next set.

Once the final images had been selected I processed and retouched these in CS4.

This was a very successful shoot and we both came away with some good images for our portfolios and the model sent me this email to add to my write up as indication of a successful outcome - please note that the images she refer to are shown at the top of this post:

"My name is Marianna Szomolay, an agency signed fashion model from Preston, and I contacted photographer Christopher Gary Horgan to boost my portfolio with some fresh fashion images. The ideas and looks that I wanted to create are attached to this email.

The images will be for online use and also to make prints which will be added to my book.

I'm very happy with the results we achieved and would definitely be interested in working with Christopher again on future projects.

Regards,

Marianna Szomolay"



Fashion and Beauty Shoot

Following on from my recent 'Steampunk' shoot for Assignment One, I shot a fashion and Beauty set with the same model.

Since my lighting course with Julian Kilsby I have been trying to concentrate on getting high quality lighting on all my studio shoots. To achieve this I have used a combination of hard and soft lighting and backlighting to get the required look.

This shoot used the infinity curve in the main studio, two backlights behind black polyboards (to reduce the reflection of light onto the background), a fine honeycomb grid (at 45 degrees to the model) as the main light and a large softbox six feet behind the grid to provide fill.

Each light was individually metered to get f8 for the grid and backlights and f4 for the fill light. Another meter reading was taken with all the lights in operation. I needed to experiment with the placement of the radio trigger as all four lights did not trigger at first and I ended up with the radio trigger in one of the backlights which ensured that all lights operated correctly.

After the lights were set up I adjusted the position of the model to get the correct exposure and then took some test shots and the grey card shot.

The Model is Natalie Powers and the MUA is Ces Bradbury.

I was really pleased with how this shoot turned out and the lighting looked exactly as I had hoped it would. The combination of hard and soft light, together with a slightly cool colour temp on the post-production side of things works well for this model and the make up and styling. I was also happy with my retouching work on this set and it is more indicative of the standard I am looking to achieve. If I could go back and reshoot to improve I would look at slightly adjusting the left backlight to give me a more dramatic effect but apart from that, I wouldn't change anything else regarding the shoot.

Primary Research

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