Living Statues 2014

This year the living statues festival was in the summer again. That meant it was hot and uncomfortable for the participants and the photographers.

Most of these were taken with the Tamron 17-50 (my goto all-purpose lens) and a flash on a monopod to get some side lighting.

A similar setup was used on the last living statues event, and also on the one before that, and the first one I went to.

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... 

End of the Dry Spell

After six months of being busy with work I've decided to get back to blogging. It has given me motivation to keep shooting, and I hope it will again. 

I do want to change the format a little bit, going into shorter posts with less text. Perhaps I will also dedicate posts to specific technical stuff. We'll see how it goes. Oh, and also, I am trying out this bilingual thing. 

אחרי חצי שנה של להיות עסוק בעבודה החלטתי לחזור לבלוג. בעבר הוא נתן לי מוטיבציה להמשיך לצלם, אני מקווה שגם עכשיו. 

אני גם רוצה לשנות קצת את הפורמט, לעבור לפוסטים קצרים יותר עם פחות טקסט. יכול להיות שגם אקדיש פוסטים לדברים יותר טכניים. נראה איך זה יילך. אה וגם אני מנסה לראות איך זה בשתי שפות. 

Living Statues 2013

Once again we are here with the Rehovot Annual Living Statues Festival.

This took place last month, but I took my time editing the photos. There's just a lot of other stuff going on, and even though I have lots of good ideas for photography, I very much doubt if I would have the time to go through with them in the near future.

This year the festival moved to a new location, at the "Founder's park" which was lit up with chains of fluorescent lights, and several large glowing globes. All making nice background for the statues.

It was kinda crowded, even though it was the last day (out of three), but I still managed to find a few good angles. I made a first round with a long lens and tripod (hard to manage around the people) and then switched to flash and wide angle. As always, the real pleasing images were mostly the ones taken with my macro lens.

Fashion Shoot 3: Evening Gowns

This week is the last part of the photo shoot I did last month. Last time I wrote much about how having one-on-one time with the models, and how it improves the quality of photos (and the overall experience for everyone, I think). This week I decided to show work I did with one model, after all the formal sessions were done. 

It was already dusk by the time we got to shoot with Alona, and the pressure for getting shots from the one overlook where you could see the sunset was really getting uncomfortable. After a few minutes I took a step back and waited for a chance to shoot. The light was going out but at least I would have some time to think and work. 

I had not brought a tripod, and only had one flash with no modifiers (beyond the built-in dome), so I could only do so much, but despite getting less than technically-perfect shots, I got interesting light and good poses (the choice of model also helps a lot here!), and that is all that matters. 

Fashion Shoot 2: Classical Gals

This week we have some more photos from the fashion shoot I went to. The previous part we had three lovely models. Today we have four models, classy gals shot on different backgrounds and with, hopefully, some interesting poses.

Most of these images were taken when we had broken into groups and got each model for a few minutes. Then we could hold up reflectors, pose our model and get some more serious work done. Having that extra few minutes of  "one on one" (though three on one is more like it) makes all the difference. One exception is for Julia, featured below, which I just grabbed (even before she had got her make up done) and posed under some interesting light. But more on that later...

For the most part I used my portrait lens (i.e. the 105 macro) but there are a couple of exceptions.

Fashion Shoot 1: Girl with the Flower Tattoo

Here is a post from a fashion shoot I did a couple of weeks ago. What? only two weeks? but it took you 2.5 months to edit the photos from New York!

Yes, well, it seems that working on my thesis full time actually makes me more efficient in editing photos.

Like in previous collaboration shoots I came thinking I would be focused and think long and hard over each frame... and like both of these shoots, I got in the rush of multiple photographers all snapping away at the models... and if you manage to catch a good pose you better shoot and hope for the best.

As always, the best shots came from a few minutes here and there stolen with some of the girls, between shoots and after it was all done.

Today we are focusing on three models, and a couple of tricks I tried to play with to mix things up a little.