Gladstone Taylor - Taylor G Photography Blog » StrobistJamaica

Strobist Studio Meetup April 3 2009

taylor — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:46:22 +0000

Hey y’all its been a while since the last Strobistjamaica meet up. Partly because of drama with a location that we really wanted to shoot on. Water commission duped us twice in a row with access to the Mona reservoir. We’ve so over that location now though so its all good.
This week we were able to shoot at pulse’s (yeah super model making, cfw presenter pulse) Studio. This was the fist indoor shoot for a strobist meet up. So our lighting was pretty consistent Didn’t have to tweak shutter speed or aperture much as everything stayed the same. And thanks to Greg there were some pretty powerful strobes (novatron 500′s x 3) and as a result of lack of communication we had 2 models (which is better than 1 so lack of communication for the win). Total crew was up to about 12 people i believe which included Tamara (MUA), Ayanna (model 1), (Gio’s model), Greg, Dameon, Ricky, Don Gio, Tonian, Peter Chen, David Madden (pass through), David (new to the group but talented), Taylor (me), our biggest turn out to date.
What I learned from this exercise is it doesn’t only take a beautiful model. I mean it certainly makes it easier but You’ve gotta use the meat between your ears. Prepare, plan , prepare and then plan some more. have your concepts down before entering that studio and after nailing what you want.. if there’s still time go ahead and try some free styled / fun stuff.

Strobist Jamaica meet up March first 2009

taylor — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:02:13 +0000

The weekly strobist meet up in Jamaica happens every Sunday at a location decided by the group over at their home base on the web. This week our model was acquired via facebook and details ironed out over msn. Everything was finalized by Friday night.

Model: Christina Duharris
Location: National Water Commission’s Mona Dam / Reservoir
Photographers: Don Giovanni, Bracket, Toni-ann, Greg and My self
Meet up Time: 9:00 Am at a central spot in Liguanea from where we’ld all ride up to the shoot location and setup.

The turn out was every one other than my self was late (a freakish turn of events i kid you not its typically the other way around). there was a surprise for everyone other than Don Gio who arranged the whole thing. We had a extremely talented make up artist on set this week which all the photographers were really greatfull for as we could request changes to make up to match our concepts.

Here’s a Video of the model being prepped by the make up artist as well as random idle chatter by the other shooters.

we were able to shoot at the Mona Reservoir for about 1 hour before we were booted for venturing too far into restricted areas all for the name of the shot :’(. We then took the shoot to Hope Gardens, A botanical garden / park / zoo In the Mona Area, Where those who didn’t get a chance to execute their concepts were able to shoot. We wrapped up around 5pm and held minor discussions about the next meetup relative to location. Look out for the next one nxt week.

The weekend of Light

taylor — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:11:48 +0000

February ended pretty cool in my opinion. Friday night I had a field day.. erm night lighting glass followed by smoke at home in my recent studio (pics coming soon) which i turned a room at home into. Used foam core as the backdrop and base. Plexi Glass to pick up a reflection of the glass and the strobe behind the foam core backdrop to give that rim lighting effect on the glass. Here’s a sample shot from that whole session. I had a bit of color problems cuz of my horrid tungsten lighting. but a piece of white paper which i used as my white balance card to use a custom white balance sorted all of that out.

Now for the Smoke, My favorite part of the night. I took some incense sticks I saw my mom with n decided to try this experiment out. I’m sure you’ve seen tonnes of photos of people lighting smoke so this is nothing profound however I just loved the results. I lite the smoke off axis and had the light a bit behind the smoke and off to the right so as to not light the foam core background at all. The results were great. to the left you can see a composite of the glass and the smoke.

On Sunday there was the Strobist Jamaica meet up but I have yet to process those images so that post will come later. video included .