Fashion at WIS

Today I have a selection of photos from my first independent production / fashion shoot, with the lovely Liora. 
I wanted to start simple with one model and one photographer. I wanted to do a shoot in Weizmann Institute of Science for a while now. Only recently did I have enough time to actually go ahead with it. It has been about a month of editing the pictures and selecting just a few from the 150+ I ended up with was not easy. 

Model: Liora Finkelshtein
Make up artist: Shirli Castro
Styling: Chen Haver Asulin (from Lolipop Vintage Fashion) 
Director of photography: Keren Shalev

Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope the images were worth the wait... 

Arachnophobia

It is spider season in Weizmann institute. All the shrubs on the side of the roads are spotted with patches of spiderwebs.

Naturally I got a tripod and a macro lens one day.

This shot of one not-so-shy spider (most of them ran away when I got this close - making me think how important working distance is for macro work) is actually a composite of two images with slightly different focus plane. At these distances it was impossible to get everything in focus without compromising sharpness.

So instead of compromising, I prefer compositing.

Below are some more shots of different spiders along the way.

Recent Work: November

This week I have decided to get back to basics, meaning the original reason I opened this blog: to share recent work. Although I haven't got a real theme like most of the post until now, some common threads may be found in the pictures to follow (hint: its cats).

Also, I have moved my camera to a new shoulder bag, this time one that doesn't look like a camera bag (i.e. not Lowe Pro) which makes it much less conspicuous when shooting on the street.

The idea is to be able to draw quickly but not look like I was there to spy on anyone. This works a lot better with a small 50mm prime but if I am quick enough, I can get away with larger lenses as well (large lens = longer focal length. Sometimes).

BTS: AQUARIUM

Not so much a "behind the scenes" as it is a collection of "out takes" from the AQUARIUM shoot.

I try and go over all the pictures I have in a memory card before formatting it. This often makes for a hilarious stop motion video (the party at Aviram's house for example, was pretty amusing).

After the jump: the video of all the many-many shots we took to combine into the final products (not including the ones deleted in-camera...) and a couple of shots off my phone which I took while we were making the outside-looking-in picture with Aviram swimming on the top panel of the glass.

It's all rather self explanatory I think....

AQUARIUM

This one I am really excited about...

Not only did I work on this for two weeks but I really had people's support on this little project, and that makes it all worth while.

So first of all thanks to all my good friends at the aquarium for dressing up, shooting bubbles and holding stuff up while I took these. And for not telling me its a stupid idea (which crossed my mind several times).

I don't want to go into too many technical details, though I will say a few words on the color scheme for this shoot (after the jump).


It is a bit silly, I admit.

Silly, and Epic.


AQUARIUM!

Non the WISer...?

This week was the last exam of the semester. Finishing my first year as graduate at Weizmann Institute of Science was long and tedious work, but I can honestly say I had learned a lot. Example: when to turn an image into monochrome. How to do star trails with other bright objects in the frame. Stuff like that. A little bit of physics too. No optics courses, thank god!
Those are remarkably boring, usually. The only time when I had actually liked optics is when I realized