Courtenay, B.C. Railway personal shoot

 Courtenay Costume Rental's

Personal project

Photography shoot

For a few years now I have wanted to do a shoot with a heritage feel to it. I have been snooping through second hand shops to find vintage props, without much success.

Last summer I decided to drop into Courtenay Costumes on Puntledge road to see what they had for possible props.

And Wow what a selection, we snooped through the dresses, hats, belts scarfs, jewelry suit cases, you name it they have it.

What a selection. We decided on vintage white dress and a vintage pattern dress for each one of the models. 

It was a beautiful sunny day, we were camping at Comox lake that week, the girls grabbed their little bit of make up hair pins, clips and accessories that they thought they might need and off we went to the railway station. 

Models: Gabby Lindsay

Hannah Kent

Miranda Kent




1/640's of a second. I wanted the buildings to be in focus, crisp clean and sharp with detail. The f-stop I was using f/16. ISO at the lowest possible setting which with a D3 is Low 1.0




It was about 3:00 when we started. Lots of sunlight, you can see by the hard shadows in the first photo the sun was mid sky as the shadows are relatively long and hard. 




I decided to take the girls to the shader side of the station so I could use different lighting techniques. 
in this next photo of the girls on the stairs,

I first set my camera setting to expose for the sky. I wanted the blue contrast against the red of the building. Then  it was time to light the girls. 
 I turned on my SB 800's two of them set at 1/4 power.  
One of the flashes was pointing at the model on the top rail which was shot through a shoot through umbrella, the other flash was pointing at the lower model direct (no diffusion) 
as I only had one umbrella with me. (traveling)
You can see the shadows on the skirt of the lower model, without diffusion you get hard shadows.
 
                 There was no sun at all on this side of the building.                  All lit by two off camera flashes. I triggered them using an Su-800. 

You can see the hard shadows behind Hannah, and the rim lighting on her hands.

This photo I placed one sb-800 to the models left side of her, it was placed up on the rail, I wanted a highlight on the far side of her face to give more dimension to the photo. Using the rail in the composition to lead the eye to the model. 

These two photos were backlit by the sun, the front of her I lit with one sb-800 and a silver reflector. You can see the highlight in the models eye on the 2nd photo, with out the highlight you wouldn't have much life in the models face.




Back to the sunny side of the station!

For this photo, we used the vintage umbrella to defuse the light, no hard shadows. Leading lines  from the train tracks to add dimension to the photo. 

This photo was shot without any fill light no flash, no reflectors!

                                                                                                          

This photo I used a silver reflector, you can see the difference in the lighting in her face. 

This photo of Gabby I metered the camera with the in camera's metering system, using the spot meter mode in her face,  and took the shot.  Since the camera was metering from her face the background is over lit. Still works, just sets a different feeling in the image then the one below.  

This shot was taken with in a minute of the last photo. I wanted to post this so you could see how the different metering systems can help you get the different moods in your photos.
First what i di was meter for the ambient light. I used the same f stop as the last shot f 16 and then used a little fill light, on the model. For that shot, I flashed my sb-800 into the gold side of the reflector so I would reflect a larger source of light. The sky is bluer and the over all feel is different. 

Playing with shadows, spot meter from the skin.

Hannah and her suit case!

The last 3 images I shot with the sun as the back and side light. Using one flash and a reflector to fill the  light on the darker side. 

In the last image you can see two light sources in Hannah's eye's, a small shadow just under chin. 

Quite often if you are wondering how a photo was lit, you can break it down by looking at the direction of shadows, highlights in the eyes, rim lighting ect... there are many clues, in most photos, just take the time to look at them. 

For this shot the same as above, but I wanted to have the sun setting in the background. I cheated and created it with a lens flare in Photoshop in layers. The girls wanted to go back to the lake for an afternoon swim...
This shoot took us about 3 hours, I have lots more good photos from the shoot, but I posted the best ones, so I could explain the set up and ideas. 

Equipment used

Nikon 24-70 mm lens, very nice piece of glass 2.8 aperture. Love this lens

Nikon SB-800 Wish Nikon was still making them., they now have the 900 very bulky and the new sb700. Looks very similar the 800. Has good reviews, except the battery door not as strong as people would like.
 I haven't purchased one yet, still looking to buy more sb 800's on ebay. 

Lastolite 5 in one reflector

Lastolite shoot through umbrella

Nikon D3. Love it Still no need to upgrade. This is one incredible camera, 

Su 800. Great tool for adjusting your flashes from the camera, and triggering, as long as they are in close range.
If you have any questions, just send me an email through my website or leave a comment on the blog.
Follow if you would like,  soon I will be posting a blog for Bahrain Top model season 3, episode 3....
We have had our challenges this month!

Bahrain Top Model Feb issue 2011

Bahrain Top Model

Season 3 Episode 2

Theme for this months magazine is Recycling.

Searching for a location that symbolizes recyling, we decided on the Scrap yard down in Riffa. 

it has some great locations for photography. Since this was a competition, I wanted the girls to use the same set and try and get there best shots. 

Originally I had this idea that I would merge three of their best images together to give a few poses on each page.  do this I had to lock the tripod down and light the bus up enough to have equal lighting through out.  You can see more of this in the you tube Video that I have attached. 

I put one light outside the bus with a long Chimera softbox running along the windows, this didn't work very well as the windows were painted red and created some red highlights and tones on the skin. So I then opted for a beauty dish with a window open, so I could keep the skin tones correct. 

 I had another light running near the back of the bus with a profoto 600 R reflector on it, I wanted this light to separate the model from the background.

The props used in the shoot, were from the junk yard, we snooped around through treasures and found all sorts of interesting things.

I think this was a great addition to the shoot. 

Little bit of dusting and we were ready to get to work.

Here are the girls final images for Fact Magazine published in February issue 2011.

Attached is a you tube Video that I put together, it shows a bit of the back scenes of the day.

Equipment used for this shoot. 

Photo shoot with Veronica Lynn Designs

Veronica Lynn Designs

&

Jacqueline Kent Photography.com

Hornby Island, B.C.

Canada

                                                                                                                                                                    It all started a couple summer's ago when I was on annual trip to one of the beautifulest places in the world. We go there every summer to visit my parents.

I have been visiting Hornby island since I was 17. 

It is one of the most creative, relaxing, interesting friendly places I have ever been.

At the market I met this young designer named Veronica Lynn, she had some of the most amazing one off dresses I had ever seen. I had this idea since I travel with my two daughters (whom model)

 to do a shoot with her fashions.

I asked her if she was interested, and she was thrilled at the idea. Timing was our biggest issue that summer, and before we knew it summer was over and the idea never came too.

I was so inspired by this young woman's creative ideas and imagination I would think of her throughout the year. She had one incredible detailed black evening dress that I fell in love with it, it had little pebbles wrapped in tulle and knotted around the neck line, it looked so regal.  

The following summer when we arrived on Hornby I went to the market first thing to see if she still had the black dress with the pebbles. I was very disappointed when she didn't have it hanging on her clothing rack, and was overjoyed when she told me it was at home. 

So the project was planned.

I had ideas where I wanted to go with each dress she had designed as each dress made a statement and was such a strong visual I thought I would play along to push the concept a little farther. 

My daughter Miranda with her flaming red hair, naturally curly was with me at the time, so she was my travel model. We started at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon and tucked into the forest to get out of the direct sun. To light this shoot, I used a golden reflector, and two sb-800 nikon flashes. As traveling with lights is a bit cumbersome, and in a situation like this there is so much light, a bounce is all that is needed. 

Miranada's skin is very pale and with the golden reflector created some nice sun kissed effects when needed. 

In the forest there were giant ferns and viola the forest nymph was born.

On Hornby Island they have a free store. Yes, it is the neatest place to visit. Everything is free. Saying that everything is someone else's discardable s. 

The Center recycles everything from plastic, cardboard, old gas bottle tanks, pretty much anything that people discard can be found there. Paint, Hornby paint we call it, everyone brings their left over paint and it all goes into one barrel, it varies from a light grey to a darkish grey!

Even the compost has a system, it would be normal to see a couple deer feeding at the compost spot. 

Some of Veronicas designs are pieces of fabric, or parts of a trim, that she incorporates into her designs. 

She has some of the most unique and creative dresses as you can see looking through this selection. 

Sometimes you might find a bone or a seashell, stones or feathers! 

The dress below is the one that 

inspired me to do the shoot

I included a close up of the neck line so you can see how intricate the work is. 

This last group of

                                                                   photos were taken

as the sun was setting. 

Its a little area called 

Fords Cove. 

A beautiful scenic place as the shore is made with sand stone and as the years of storm have worn down the shore line there are so many interesting patterns and moonscapes. The photo on the left was taken with just the natural sun a beautiful warm glow on the skin. The image on the right I took my settings from the sky then light Miranda with one flash. 

The last shot was my favorite for the day, We decided to call it Medusa.  The sun had just gone down, yet there was still a lot of ambient light available. I photographed this with two flashes, shot at 1/320th of a second, (high speed sync) as I was trying to control the ambient light, there were people sitting behind Miranda watching and I wanted to keep the light on her and the rocks. Not on the audience watching. The aperture setting f/8 and I had the flash's set on zoom, so the light would hit her hard and keep the texture in the stone and the dress.  Arron, lighting assistant was standing just out of the frame of the photo to the left.

This is the young man that helped me out for the shoot. He has great desire to work as a photographer in Canada, very keen to learn.
If you ever have the desire to go to Vancouver island, I highly recommend Hornby Island for a visit.
But be careful you will fall in love with the place and the people.
This is a link to Veronicas site, if you feel the need for something unique.

http://veronicalynndesigns.com/artwork/1627313_Photo_shoot.html