Desert Colors

So here's another overdue fashion photo shoot we did almost six months ago... this time going back to Beer Sheba for some desert themed portraits.

I was contacted by Adi, the makeup artist, to do a desert shoot. Her emphasis was on the colors of the makeup, but I had though this would be a great opportunity to bring to life another idea I had for a while now.

I had purchased some shiny colored fabrics a few months before this, hoping I'd have the chance to shoot something a little more abstract with fabrics blowing in the wind.

The wind wasn't as cooperative as I'd hoped, but the end results were still quite interesting. I liked the fact that we didn't need a fashion provider for the shoot, as the fabrics doubled as dresses, held together casually with hair clips.

Models: Tal Ratson and Michal Carmi
Makeup and hair: Adi Chen

Photo Recipe

Today we have a short one, bringing together my two great loves: food and photography. In fact, this very blog had started with a food-photography post I put up almost four years ago!

This time I wanted to participate in a photographic-recipe contest arranged by the student body at my institute. I don't know if the contest ever did happen or if I just missed the deadline, but I was making food one day and decided to document some of the process.

It took me twice as long to make the damn thing because I had to stop and fidget with the flash for some of these shots... but once the food was cooking I didn't have that much time for setting it up just right, and when it was ready I wasn't thinking about the pictures anymore - I was way too hungry!

A list of ingredients + instructions after the break...

Living Statues 2015

Like every year I find myself coming back to the Rehovot living statues festival. Being my hometown it is convenient to come visit and go have a look at this year's statues with my folks.

So this festival was in July, and just like the last few times, I came ready with a flash pole, and got the most drama out of these nightshots as I could.

I like to compare the new innovations to the statues from previous years, particularly when I can recognize some of the performers and see how they come up with new costumes each year. I can maybe even see my own work improving from year to year... but I leave that for you to decide.

Brides and Beach

So last summer we did our second bridal photo-shoot (the first one here),  this time on the beach of Caesarea. I had been contacted by make up artist Danit, that already had the wedding gown vendors and the location chosen. We only needed to find two models, which led us to the beautiful Maria and Karina that star in this post. I had also contacted my friend Yael to video the whole shoot.

The schedule for the shoot was clear. We arrive at 16:00 at Danit's house, and begin makeup and hair on the two models in parallel, switch them, and then drive 15 minutes to Caesarea beach to be there at 17:00, with plenty of time to spare before magic hour. In practice, everyone was late (there was horrible traffic), getting ready took longer than I thought, and we had ended up arriving at the location less than half an hour before sunset. So we scrambled, we skipped over some things and went straight for the money shot.

Studio Sessions - Adi

 After a few non-fashion posts I decided to jump back a bit to my first (and so far only) studio session. I had been collaborating again with Zoe from Swans Moda and this time we shot in her studio/basement. You may recall our beach shoot from the year before, or the urban winter shoot.

The model for this shoot is the beautiful, not-yet-even-eighteen Adi Hashamonai, who made things very easy for me as she both knew how to work the camera angles and looked amazing in anything we put on her. 

The studio setup was pretty simple. A white fabric with two constant lights in soft-boxes to burn it out, another constant soft-box as fill from the left, and my flash in a fourth soft-box as key. Then I alternated between the 105mm for closeups and the 50mm for full body and medium shots, as I didn't have enough room to back up to use only the long lens for everything. 

Princess Jewels

After all the fashion and portrait work I've been doing recently, I found that product photography had way more paying customers... this shouldn't be a surprise I guess. 

But I actually really like taking product shots. It's technical, there are well-known rules to getting it right, and with a little practice and fairly basic gear you can get surprisingly good results. 

So I had gotten some work to go and take pictures in a jewelry shop in Rishon LeZion. I knew I was going to use flashes and a macro lens, and I knew the products won't be too large. So in addition to getting the lightstand and umbrella, I also made an impromptu light tent from a coca cola six pack cardboard box and some baking sheets. This looked really ridiculous, and I would not recommend this just because it will make your clients think you're a real hack... but the light inside this contraption was pretty sweet. If you look on the left you can see the shape of the three cutouts where the light comes into the box, and the dark rectangle where the camera comes in.

New York City 2015

This time around in New York City, I was going to focus mainly on the people. On my first trip to New York I was overwhelmed by the towering skyscrapers and parks and neighborhoods and I didn't really take many portraits. Two years later, I had already realized that travel (or landscape) photos are almost always more interesting with people in them... 

Very early in this four-day stay I had purchased a new 50 mm lens, this time at f/1.4 (refurbished or used I don't remember). That didn't seem like much of a step up from my older f/1.8 lens, on paper at least, but in reality, the quality gap was pretty big. This new lens gave stunning results, and could be opened up to f/2 before getting soft. My old $100 lens could barely stay sharp at 2.8, and at those apertures, every stop counts. I was also carrying around my trusty 105 macro and the Tokina 11-16 ultra-wide, a DX lens that's also FX "compatible" so that zoomed-in the dark corners were pretty small and could easily be cropped out. That's what you get for going to full-frame before having enough money to buy a full set of new lenses. 

Madison (why I love my new Nikon)

I haven't been uploading recently, and there's a ton of new stuff waiting to come up to this blog. I hope I will get it pretty much in order, and anyway, it's better late than never.

So, going back to May 2015 I had flown to Wisconsin for a conference and some work with the collaboration I was part of. Like every trip abroad this is a chance to see and photograph new sceneries and people, and to act like a tourist and take pictures of absolutely everything.

This was my first chance to try out my new Nikon D610, which performed beautifully and, even though I still love my old D90, did let me do some new things I couldn't get away with using the old technology and crop sensor...

So just a small selection of images from the lovely Madison, WI. If you like this kind of thing, I will link to a few facebook albums with some more images.

Front row to Barca

The last time I really got to use my old D90 as main camera was on our trip to Barcelona. My amazing wife took me for my birthday to see a Barca football game live, and even though I had just bought a new camera, I wanted the trip to be about enjoying the trip, not about exploring the possibilities of a new toy, so I left it at home.

We were there for a few days, but the real highlight was, of course, the game. So I tried my best to enjoy it, and not spend the whole hour and a half just taking photos. We did sit right on the first row, so I couldn't resist taking some shots. 

I was shooting most of it with the Nikon 55-300 lens, which is not ideal, but it can get you real close... in fact, I had to zoom out quite a few times when the players were close to the fence. 

These can't compare with what professionals get on the sidelines of these games, not just because of their far better equipment, but also because they know the right moment to capture all the action. For a first attempt, I think I may have gotten a few shots that are not bad. Here's a few... 

Bridal Bash

We have a lot of catching up to do... My last post was towards the end of March, and I had not scratched the surface of the images from the masks photoshoot, already done a wedding shoot and managed to spend some time overseas (and images pending). 

So in the next few weeks I will try to write (briefly) about all of these shoots, in no particular order.

Today I want to present a few images from a rather long and interesting shoot we did in March... As you can see, the theme of the shoot is bridal gowns. 

I had joined the production when everything was already set up, all I needed to do was choose a location somewhere around the beauty salon and go shoot.

We had four models (!), hair and makeup, and of course the beautiful white dresses that star in this production.

Rock and Roll Baby

Back from vacation and again trying to catch up on old photoshoots.

These images were taken back in February along with the mystery lady shoot.

We had three models and seven different looks and these two were particularly interesting.

The concept behind this production was masks, as it was just before Purim (the Jewish holiday for costumes) but we switched to a different styling after we felt the masks had done their part. The look we were going for was grungier, rock and roll club party girl look. More after the jump.

Model: Mishel Rabinkov | Styling: Jeni Ageev | Makeup: Iris Roizen Fainstein | Hair: Andrey Zukal | Dress: Natali Boychuck

Mystery Lady

Today I want to write about a photoshoot we did a few weeks ago (yes it takes time before I am even done with the editing and can go on to blogging).

The shots were taken in a pool joint / bar, and the lighting was completely artificial. Which makes it easier in a lot of senses. It also lets you do whatever you want when it comes to light and color.

In this first post from the photoshoot I want to introduce Tal, a beautiful new model I had wanted to work with for a while now. Finally this production took us to Beer Sheva and things worked out.

The theme in this set is masks, and it was part of a session we did for Purrim (the Jewish masquerade holiday).

Model: Tal Ratson | Styling: Jeni Ageev | Hair and makeup: Andrey Zukal | Dress: Natali Boychuck