Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Site online

New website online!

www.mizomi.com


designed by Valeria Figallo

New photography website under construction

I have a web designer working on a new Flash version of my photography portfolio website. She's a model/photographer/web designer I met through Model Mayhem.

The cool thing is, we've never met face to face. She's located in Lima, Peru.

What even cooler is, she's only 17.

I've already had the chance to see the preliminary work she's done for my site and it's way beyond anything I'd be able to create on my own.

Check out her work at www.design.valeriafigallo.net.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Images from last month's shoot on Oahu

Had the chance to work with two models on Oahu last month - Alia and Kristen. I met both of them through their portfolios on ModelMayhem.com. I also got to work with two excellent makeup artists - Toni and Kecia. They were all excellent to work with and very patient with me as I am still getting used to working in a studio.

For these two shoots, I was able to rent some studio time at Ohana West Studio in Honolulu.
Very convenient location - right across the street from Honolulu Community College.

These two images are of Alia. We wanted to add some color to her portfolio, so we used a kimono-style silk robe and a red samurai sword (found both of these in Akihabara). We had a WL 1600 in a medium softbox as her main light, and an AB800 in a strip box behind her to separate her from the background.


We used a fan to add movement to some of the shots. Ohana West Studios has this big industrial fan that only has 2 speeds - hurricane mode and holycrapthisisfast. The fan was so strong it kept moving the softbox. But it made for some great shots.






This is Kristen. She wanted to try out a cupcake theme, and this was one of my favorite images of the day.


Even though she did not have as much experience as some other models I've worked with in the past, she was amazing to work with. This was one of the last images of the day that we shot, and she really made it work.

For this image, We used pretty much the same lighting as Alia's kimono shoot with only two changes. First we changed the background to a white seamless. We then put a grid on the medium softbox to keep most of the main light from spilling onto the white seamless paper, and cause the main light on her to gradually falloff. This let us change the background color to medium gray, and also draw more attention to the model's face.


Thanks to two wonderful (and patient) models, and two excellent makeup artists, I gained some more experience with working in a studio environment and was able to add some variety to my portfolio.