My buddy Neil Van Niekerk is coming to Denver on August 18th to do a workshop on state-of-the-art flash photography techniques. This is an amazing opportunity and space is limited: head over to Planet Neil for more information about the workshop, dates, and how to sign up.

I did a great shoot this past April in New Jersey with Neil. It was set in the Paterson Historical Museum, and the modeling was done by Priscilla.

Part 1
Part 2

Then on to some strobe shots in the black room.

But then we moved to the white room.  I enjoyed this high key setup as a change of pace from the previous shoots.

And to mix things up a little bit I pushed the shadow areas of this last photo to bring in some blacks.

]]> http://www.steve-z.com/body-form-photography-workshop-class-3-studio-strobes/feed/ 1 http://www.steve-z.com/leftover-bikinis-part-2/ http://www.steve-z.com/leftover-bikinis-part-2/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:18:26 +0000 stevez http://www.steve-z.com/?p=596 And now for something completely different but exactly the same thing.  The last shots I posted super colorful and posed, while these shots are close up and arty.  I like these better.

It has come to my attention that there are still people who read my blog despite the fact that I haven’t been updating it with cool photos of mountain bikes and cute girls very much lately.  I’ve been soooo busy with September weddings, things have gotten away from me a bit.  And it’s hard to post fun stuff when you aren’t doing fun stuff.  Not that weddings aren’t fun, but those images go on the other blog.  But, I realize that it is not an excuse for leaving such an exceptionally un-Steve-Z post at the top of the blog for so long.  I have a plan in the works to further specialize my websites, in the future the corporate stuff is going to show up elsewhere.  In the meantime, I’ve dug up some photos of Julie that I haven’t posted yet.  And even better I have more swimsuit shots of her that I took way back in January on the beach that I have been saving for a rainy day.  I’m thinking it will probably be pouring on Tuesday.

My friends at Green Guru Gear/Ecologic Designs hosted a smokin’ fashion show and a rippin’ party to celebrate the expansion of their facilities in eco-friendly Boulder, CO. You may recall that last summer I headed out the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show with these guys in their vegetable oil powered Sport Utility Ambulance.

Green Guru makes groovy cool products out of all kinds of stuff that we normally throw away. Bike tubes, fabric from Coke bottles, climbing rope, and lots and lots of vinyl billboards. The bag you see above, the runway, the backdrop, and even the outfit you see below once clogged up the landscape with marketing slogans trying to make us buy stuff. Personally I’d rather have ladies acting as billboards trying to make me buy stuff.

The finale featured a contortionist wearing an outfit made from recycled inner tubes. Can you figure out how she has gotten her leg up there? Yeah, me neither!

OK so I did another modeling photo shoot. I’ve been working on improving my lighting and I’ve been interested in combine mountain scenery nature shots with a fashion style of lighting. I was able to get Arianna to model for me at the last minute one morning when I awoke to great clouds (again). She did such a great job; I think she’s super photogenic. I used an assistant and 1 softbox for all these shots. I don’t have too much else to say so just enjoy the gallery!

More images after the page break!!!!

I’m imagining that I’m sitting on the beach, squishing the warm sand in between my toes. Mmmmmmmm.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Welcome to Part 2 of the Crystal Fashion Shoot. Chronicalogically this was Part 1, but never mind that! Crystal needed a photo to run in her local La Junta newspaper in an ad for Cinco de Mayo festivities. I could have taken one good shoot and have been finished . . . but that wouldn’t be my style. I have a way of going overboard when it comes to getting “1 more good shot . . . ” Things are busy busy these days, so I’m not going to jabber on, and I’ll leave you to the gallery.

There are a couple more after the break . . .

I have been on the lookout for interesting locations to shoot in Boulder.  I keep whining that Boulder doesn’t have much interesting architecture to shoot in front of.  It seems that everywhere you turn there are more brick buildings.  I was determined to find somewhere urban and edgy to shoot downtown.  In the end, I would up being somewhat foiled by the monotany, and I shot in front of bricks.  Again.  Oh well, I brought out the Strobist gear to add some hard light to give an edgy feel to some of the shots.

I was able to find a narrow alley that looked somewhat city-like. The whole scene was pretty funny, as we were getting quite a few inquizative looks from Boulderites.  People are used to seeing engagement and wedding shoots, but this fashion stuff is pretty radical for 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon in The Republic.

Check out some more  photos after the page break . . .

These photos are actually from the second half of our shoot.  I’m saving the first half for Cinco de Mayo, since there is a bit of a theme involved.  So check back in a few days to see Crystal in an entirely different light!

No, I’m not back in some warm tropical locale, I’m just pretending. I still have a lot of the photos that I took on my trip to Florida yet to edit. I’m intentionally spacing out the warm weather photos. Like Homer would say, “Mmmmmmm, bikinis.” Or something like that.

I did this shoot right after watching an informational seminar on shooting in bright sunlight. Bright sun can be challenging to shoot in because it is going to create blown out highlights and dark shadows. A camera cannot record the full range of light and shadows that we can see with our eyes. So the trick to shooting out in bright sun is to plan where you want the light to blow out in the photos.

Well, yeah, you could always go under a tree in the shade somewhere. But I’ve found that pure shade can lead to photos that are kindof boring and flat.

I found that bright sun can really produce dramatic effects in your photos. I find these images intriguing where I intentionally blew out parts of the photos. Some of the other photos that I took where everything was exposed properly seem boring in comparison!

When you see Sports Illustrated type model shoots, the images are shot at the perfect light time of day, or there is a gaggle of assistants holding light blocking screens or auxiliary lighting. Sure I could have done that here, but when you are shooting weddings you don’t always get the chance to shoot when the light is perfect. A great photographer can produce solid images in any kind of light.

Another thing that I learned in some of the seminars is that I really liked a lot of the images that were blatantly (to me) manipulated in Photoshop. So I went a little crazier than normal on these photos with the color tweaking. But no, I didn’t  Photoshop her eyes to be different colors in the above photo.  That’s just how the picture came out.  We’ll see how I like my editing style three months from now. In the past when I’ve picked a strong editing style I’ve found myself changing my mind on what I like later.

More images after the page break . . .

Julie did a great job at this shoot. She didn’t really have any professional modeling experience; she’s actually a school teacher. Hmmmm, is a certain Van Halen song coming to mind?

We got so many great shots that I decided to divide her set up into two different posts. We shot in several different locations around the hotel property. These are just the ones by the pool.

We had a pretty fun day shooting. I must have took two dozen photos of her laughing! She really had a great personality and a great attitude. Just to show you that she’s not all serious all the time, I include this last photo where a bit of her personality came out!

I’ll be posting the second round of photos from this shoot in another week or so. I need to space out the cute girl pictures over this long cold winter in Boulder!

I’ve been getting back into the studio after a few months off. In one week I shot three paying gigs there. This is Meliana from Brazil. She is building her modeling portfolio, so look for more shots of her in the near future.

The day that I published the boots and stockings shot below turned out to be the biggest traffic day for this site. I couldn’t figure out exactly why at first. But then I realized that the model had posted some of the pics to her Myspace page on the same day. I’m assuming that is how the traffic got here; unless there is a big secret internet stocking fetish that I’m not aware of. Could be. Either way, I’m sure you’ve been dying to see the head attached to the legs, so here you go. VidKitty is wicked video artist, former expert bike racer, an all around ass kicker. You can check out VidKitty’s MySpace page HERE.