Dubai Red Bull X fighters 
April 15, 2011

Last night I went to this extreme sports event in Dubai, What an amazing event 15,000 people, down in the Dubai Marina what a beautiful place to be. The grand stands where massive and completely packed with people from all ages.  The waves crashing in on the beach, helicopters in the sky and the Jumeriah Beach Residence peering down at the on lookers. I was totally blown away. What a night.

There were 10 riders competing in the first stage of the 2011 tour in Dubai, the first 5 were competing to get into the qualification round. Two out of the 5 placed, into the competition. During the competition round two riders rode back to back and competed to take it to the next round.

01	Nate Adams	USA	370
02	Andre Villa	NOR	365
03	Dany Torres	ESP	310
04	Levi Sherwood	NZL	290
05	Adam Jones	USA	290
06	Robbie Maddison	AUS	265
07	Mat Rebeaud	SUI	175
08	Eigo Sato	JAP	130
09	Mike Mason	USA	105
10	Jim McNeil	USA	95

  I was utterly amazed by the flexibility and athleticism of the young fliers. When I first went to the event, I thought I was watching guys that like to ride bikes, well.  I soon realized that there was a possibility that they enjoyed the aerobatics of the flight as much as riding.  Not just well, the best, these guys are the best in the world.




The riders are judged on 5 different categories and have 90 seconds to show the roaring crowd what they can bring to the sand pit.

Judge 1:    Variety

Judge 2:     Challenge and Execution

Judge 3:     Style

Judge 4:    Use of Course


Judge 5:    Show and Spectator Reaction

        This is the beginning of the world tour for them, Dubai,  Brazil, Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia.

Superman stunt, hands behind back, being pulled along in the airstream and the momentum of the bike. 

Yes, he truly can fly like superman

Dany Torres of Spain triumphed with 100 points in Dubai, In the lead to the next event. 

 For more information, on the rules regulations of the event and to find out more about sponsorship please check out, www.redbullxfighters.com


This was a question asked by one of my readers: Fantastic photos Jacqueline.. what were your settings? ISO? They are so clear and bright! 
Here is some details about the shoot!  The riders were lit up with great big spots, they didn't have a yellow or blue cast to the skin tones. I believe they were day light temperature lights 6500k.  I had my white balance at auto, as it seemed to handle the ambient light quite well. My Iso setings were between 2000 and 3200. I shot some of the photos with my 70-200mm lens at 2.8. then switched to the bigger zoom lens, as I was on the ground a ways back, so my 80-400 was a better choice, The lowest aperture on this lens is 4.5. and my shutter speed on the moving targets was between 1/320 and 1/500s. The best focus plain to use was the single, sometimes I used the auto focus, other times i focused on the gravel, roughly about where I thought the riders would launch, lock down the folcus point with the AFL button, and wait till they hit that depth of field. Hope that helps... 


If you have any other questions feel free to ask, I am happy to share!
To see the video clip on the event click here on this link.
http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Video/Red-Bull-X-Fighters-Dubai---Best-Action-021242995441461

Now in Dubai

So here we are living in the big Metropolitan city of Dubai. the U.A.E.
how could that be, we left in 2004, went to Canada for a year and a half, 6 school years in Bahrain, and here we are back yet again. I say that not as a surprise but a pleasant thrill. I was very sad when we left and so excited to be back.

We have been here for three weeks now, the kids have managed there way perfectly well with out any glitches. Very proud of them as moving into a new school and being the new kids can be challenging to say the least in many schools. They have found great new friends and reunited with old friends.
We spent the first two weeks with the Hurlbuts one of our oldest family friends. Don't ask how old O.K., They put up with us for the duration, and when we left, we were sad to go.  Big thanks to Margaret and Jim, for loaning us the use of your home during our transition time.
 I was looking for a temporary apartment. One with everything form dishes to linens. I don't know how, but everything in Dubai was fully booked.
Looking around this fabulous city, you ask yourself how is that possible, with all the sky scrappers that there wouldn't be a 4 bedroom furnished apartment available. I think a lot of it has to do with the unrest in the Middle East, there seem to be many refugees out and about from Egypt, Libya, Bahrain....
Paper work signed, and a key was handed to me with the numbers 1004 on the key ring.  Off we went up the escalators with our suitcase each, and my camera gear...
bags of school uniforms. Up 10 floors to a beautiful view over the Dubai Marina. Wow what a view.

Thought you might like to see what our view is like! I was very impressed, by Day and Night. 

During my 3 weeks here I have been hunting for houses. It has been a bit of a challenge. I am sure I have looked at possibly 60+houses. Always something just not right...  I was starting to think I was being possibly a bit picky. ( I had my self convinced that it had to be perfect, especially if your in it for 5 years). So the search seemed endless. Then oneday I walked into this  house and said, I could live here. It isn't a huge home or anything really special, just right for us, with a big kitchen space that is the centre of our home.  Ready for Miranda's baking with a good centre Isle. An office big enough for my camera gear, and a small studio. Double garage, for maybe a bigger studio, have to pass that one by Dave still. (Just an idea).

My big question I ask myself every time we move, is what do I want to do? I would really like to continue on with my photography, but doing what? What will be my niche? Should I steer my career toward fashion, weddings, school portraits, real-estate? There is such opportunity here in this grand City. I guess time will tell. I think at this point and time, I will bring my camera with me everywhere I go and see where my lens leads me.

I have a huge desire to get out into the desert with a team Simone the make up artist, hair artist still in search for and a few designers.
So onward I search,
For now my photos will be of sky lines and my family photos in Dubai.
Thanks,
Jacqueline Kent

Bahrain Top Model season 3 round 3 March issue of FACT

Bahrain Top Model 2011

Season 3 March issue

Venue: Audi Car dealership, Sitra Bahrain

Models, Anna, Hannah,Jasmeet, Kaleigh,  Louisa, Monica, Tabia, 

Clothes sponsored by Mango, Camaieu, Origem,

Hair by EJ Salon Supply

Make up by Simone Gannon

Stylist Laura Bale

Anna   photo was taken totally with speed lights for this photo I had two speed lights outside the car one on each side of her face with the light on the left being the main light, added a flash inside the car to get some of the details of the interior. 

Hannah
for Hannahs photo she chose the Audi R8. Nice car, I had brought a smoke machine with me and we put the smoke machine under the car and put a flash inside the back of the car to light up the smoke and the details. Two speed lights to light the face and body, the main is on the left side with the right side as a fill, used a golden umbrella to highlight the fill with a golden glow.

Jasmeet
Chose to be under the hood of the Audi A7 sportback, yet another beautiful car, To light this image, I had one flash behind the smoke, one main light with large shoot through umbrella square on the face, one light on the right with a gold umbrella to add a gold highlight. 

Kaleigh thought that being a mechanic was a great way to show her talents as a model, with a little grease added to the face with Simones' creative make up gives it a real sense of her working. The underside of the car is lit with two flashes one behind and one to the left, one flash straight on the face shot through a white umbrella.

Louisa was thinking about changing the tire,  with high heels and fabulous hair it was an easy shot to get what we wanted from her. To light this, I have one flash inside the car with a red gel, one on the floor behind the rag to light the tire, as there wasn't enough ambient light to get the details. I have one flash on her face, shoot through umbrella to soften the transition of shadow to light on her skin.

Monica was right into this shoot, she had grease, vaseline added to her skin to give a nice shine and a bit of dirt to her face. To light this image, I had a flash on the floor to high light the wall and to give some sense of separation between the subject and the wall. Two flashes were used to light her face, one was placed under the hood and one to the left of the image to create nice highlights on her face. 

Tabea was playing in the car wash, to do this image, I didn't want my flashes to get wet, so I placed them into plastic zip bags and hid one behind her on the side mirror, to highlight and separate her hair from the background. One large shoot through umbrella to light Tabea's face and the car. 

The girls Season 3 round 3 March issue of FACT
This image was a bit of work to light, it was one of the first images of the day and we had quite a bit of ambient light in the garage. I wanted to light under the cars, so profoto lights were used behind the tire of each of the cars. I had my D1 air Profoto light with a 5 ft Octabank soft box to light all the girls. Inside the car there is a flash triggering as well to add some depth to the photo. 



Photography by
Jacquelinekentphotography.com
lighting assistance Armand Hough

thanks to the team for making this such a great day. 

Fahionaires Gothica Photo 3 before and after

Here we are on our 3rd image for Gothicka fashionaires. 

BEFORE AND AFTER

This time I will post the before and after and see if you notice many changes in the two images.

Ok, where to start with this image when I open it up in photoshop the first thing I did was clean up the dirty sensor spots, One of the most frustrating things for me, I must get my camera cleaned twice a month, as I hate those little dirty brown spots. 

2). The palm tree, Radio antennae
3). The airconditioning unit up front to the right

4) Models skin and eyes, lipstick

5) flag pole

6) the concrete up front, just removed the distractions.

1) Used the clone tool to clean up the sensor spots

2) used the quick selector tool to select the palm tree and antennae and picked a clone spot that matched the colors an slowly filled it in. Some of the gate edges weren't as clean when I finished so I picked up the history brush and went over the gate to bring back the original data. A great tool .

3) The air conditioning unit was a little trickier, first I quick selected the area, then made a new layer picked up the concrete beside it and cloned it into place. I wanted to keep the texture but the color tones were too light. So I then went back to the original layer and picked up the brush tool at a soft 100 put the brush on darken, picked up a darker tone and painted the area so it would blend and still have the texture. Then went to the second layer and lowered the opacity.

4) Skin eyes and lipstick, the skin I cleaned with the clone brush, then used Mama Shans plug in (snow white buff) and lowered the opacity to 30 %. Highlighted the eyes with the dodge tool.

made a new layer, brush tool ~ set to darken picked up the black in the lipstick and painted the lips to fill them in. Then lowered the opacity on the layer till it was natural looking. 

5)Flag pole. Love the new clone tool is CS 5. It is great for Cloning these type of objects.

I picked up the area just and the tip of the building moved up a bit and cloned in an upward stroke to lengthen the flag pole. I liked the shape of the gate leading you into the image. I felt with the flagpole at the highest peak, it brings the viewers eyes around comfortable. Setting on the models face. 

6) The concrete up front and the tin work under the models arm needed a bit of cleaning with the clone tool. 

And a sharpen layer. When I sharpen I prefer not to sharpen the whole image. When its a portrait. 

Usually I make a new layer, then go to sharpen ~ Unsharp  mask  adjust till you get it the way you like it. Click on mask then mac CNTL i to reverse the mask, so now you don't see any sharpening effect at all then, and your mask layer will be black, with white on the top layer paint the areas you want sharpened. In this image, I wanted the hair, gate, concrete, and the tower in the back sharp, but not the models skin. 

When you look at these two images side by side it is very hard to notice the difference in the two photos, but the final image is so much better with the slight adjustments as the first. 

EQUIPMENT USED

FASHIONAIRES GOTHIC photo 2 BEFORE AND AFTER

"My challange for this image was to ghost my model to really give a gothic, ghostly image. It took a few tries and 4 seconds with the shutter open was enough to move the model into the two positions and manually flash at each spot."

Original image

4 seconds the shutter was open for to capture this image

my aperture was at f20, I needed to get out as much light as I could.

While the shutter was open, Ross my lighting assistant flashed the nikon sb-800  manually, once then the model moved then flashed it again! This is all done on one frame in Camera.

It can be a little tricky but with a digital camera you can keep working on it till you get it right. 

On the original image there wasn't much I didn't like about it, as the concept for Gothica worked.

Cleaned up the model skin a little bit.  

I can see the exit sign in the back ground and a push here on the door.  

So those I burned out. 

I then cleaned up a few shiny spots on the wood that I found distracting.

cropped it, then I went into filter~ lens correction~ custom~vertical correction~ +21 to correct for the slant in the window frames. 

These windows are lit by the natural sunlight that was drenching the room with way to much ambient light.  Hence the reason for such a high f stop. I really needed the 4 seconds to move the model into the two positions to get this ghost type effect. 

other ways of darkening the room would have been to use a filer 2 or 4. ND. 

This would have given me the same time value with less aperture.... But whatever, it worked. 

Finished image

Thanks to Hannah Kent Model
Ross Martin for being the flasher
Payal  and Erin from Fashionaires Middle East for organizing the day,
Camelot for allowing us to use there location.
Layers for all the accessories.
                                                        Side by side   very subtle differences

And the Eiffel tower, not sure who provided that, but it is a purse, only two in the world supposedly, and guess who has the other one?

FASHIOAIRES GOTHIC Photo 1 BEFORE AND AFTER

In this series of Fashionaires - gothica I am going to lay out the before editing photos and after effects as well as the settings that were used in the photos. 

Original image

1/800th at 6.3

using a NIkon D3 with two Nikon SB-800 strobes. 

I used a fast shutter speed because the ambient light value in the restaurant was bright and cheerful and didn't work with the theme of what we were doing so speeding up your shutter speed controls the ambient light.... Little clue there for people that want to put that into there photo bag.

Things I liked about the image

1). the pose of the model

2).the look on her face

3).the lens flare

4).the overall composition

5).the ambient light coming from the light above the models head. 

 things I don't like about it:    

 1). overall to dark 

 2) increase the red tones.

3). hair in the face.

4) the reflection on the leg

5). Move the light fixture down so it was closer to the model

6). wanted to put light in the skull to the left

7) crop it

8) dirty sensor spot by the light

Final Image

The first thing I did was open it in Light room and increase the red tones and lift the over all exposure to where the light value was better on the models face.

I then brought it into photoshop. copied the layer and zoomed in and cleaned up the hair on the models face using the clone and healing brush as well as a plug in that I purchased from Mama Shans site.

She has a portrait packet that she sells that saves hours in skin cleaning. I find many programs over work the skin and this software works really well, and you can go as heavy or as light as you want, as it is worked on in a separate layer. In the portrait pack she sells it has many skin tones, lip glosses you name it she has it. They all work very well. She has many tutorials on YOUTUBE  as well. 

www.photoshopmama.net

I used my soft 100 brush on lighten to clean up the whites of the eyes. Again don't go to far, as it can look really over processed.

I then cleaned the spots on the legs with clone 

Then used the select tool and traced around the light copied and pasted where I wanted it. Many ways to do that, but that was the quickest for me, then took a soft eraser tool and lessened the opacity of the eraser and took the hard lines away to blend the wall.

Then I selected the light from the fixture on the wall with the selection tool and copied and pasted it, moved it down ontop of the skull. Control T on mac with allow you to rotate and warp the selection. 

 I zoomed in and erased the light on the skull area where there shouldn't be light. This was a new layer so I lowered the opacity till the light value was good.

then flattened all the layers. 

Made a new layer ~ filter~ sharpen~ unsharpen~ make a mask~ control i to reverse then paint back what part of the image I wanted sharpened. 

I hope in this blog I was able to explain a little of the photoshop tools that I use. 

Is there any tools you would like to more about? Or any of this process you would like in more detail?

In this photo series I have at least 6 more images that we will go through step by step. 

If you have any questions regarding this blog don't hesitate to leave a comment.