Heading to this fashion shoot I was actually miserable, because i didn’t have my lightstands nor did i have my softbox or softbox umbrella or softliter (hmm modifiers would have covered all of that) anyway. I had 2 flashes a camera and 2 lens. as i walked in the store i started banging my head against an imaginary wall because the store looked so awesome this would have been ideal for me to have my lighting gear 100% operational but alas the milk is spilt and I have no mop so now I decided to work around it. i had my lumiquest mini softbox which i did use to slightly widen my lightsource (i would love an ltp for christmas if santa’s reading). That light was being held by the reporter I was assigned to the shoot with. She was really helpful the second light i used for fill to kinda bring out those harsh shadows the key light would create. and in some cases i used it for rim lights. did a bit of blending of natural light that was coming in through a window (i’m telling u this store was made for a photoshoot) overall I was happy I still would much rather be fully equipped but it was cool winging it and getting such awesome results. here’s an image from the shoot. the model isn’t a professional but she either lives in em vogue mags or probably really has a natural talent there. either way she rocked it.

*nb* Yes that is the strobe in the photo I’m aware it was there. There were other images with it not included (this is an out take)

Oh one key thing i kind of left out is, on the first shoot in the office location, on getting there my cybersync trigger battery was completely zapped. of course its not standard batteries so i ended up using the sb900 in su4 mode stopped the flash exposure in camera down to -1 to compensate from the on camera flash that’ll be triggering the sb900 the results from those are what was actually used for the feature. see image number 2 in the image slider.

I had the area setup like an hour before anybody showed up. Posted a pic to my flickr stream.

My stylist showed up at 2pm and my subjects were right on time an hour later.

make up and styling began immediately and we got straight into the good parts I was rocking a 2 light setup and using a white foam core for a little fill reflection at some points. The shoot flowed well with little to no difficulty at all. 1 thing that I learnt for sure is I will need to invest in a boom system. cant always rely on someone to hold my light in that position.

Image recipe: I put a sb28 behind the tummy of the mommy and pointed it directly at the seemless at full power. Aperture at f/10 shutter 250th and iso at 125. Black and white conversion in lightroom pull the contrast around to taste and you got your self a delicious silhouette.

I’ld like to give a huge thanks to my stylist @vampnixen there’s a few more projects in the bag, You’ll be hearing from me.

And the Client for being so co-operative and allowing us to create such wonderful images.

At the point in time of this photoshoot I had not figured out the whole Auto ISO thing on the D2H so the camera was bouncing around the iso levels giving me unwanted noise in some of the images but at least its sorted now (present day). For this I used a one light setup as the second poverty wizard I had on me started flacking out on me. it was my pretty standard on location one light setup about 45 degree angle for the light get the composition right nail the aperature and the shutterspeed for the exposure (the iso sadly was out of my hands so it was like iso roulette). and here is the end result. For the image I put up the speedlight (sb28 was camera right at about 1/4 power) and about 4 feet away. You can see the noise issue in the dark areas I was talking about due to the high Iso values. Marsha Was awesome to work with, easy to work with which always makes me happy as it makes me able to focus on making my photos look right. To learn more about Marsha Mcknight read the article in the flair

The pro’s in the situation was its a small wedding, And i can soooo do this

The cons were, Its in montego bay and i live in kingston and do not own a car, Its on a a saturday and I had the photojournalist day job thingy to do, I dont own a car.

With the help of a good friend @stewpert who travels between kingston and montego bay regularly I was able to call in a fav for a mobay run for the day, I’ld handle food and gas for him. dude agreed and everything was ready. My backup for the wedding was already booked @9970000 of IMGwire. We left kingston at approximately 7am and were in montego bay by about 11 or 12pm.

Got to the location which was beautiful may I add, and scouted for locations to shoot the formals and so on. The wedding was set to begin at 3pm but you know how these things are, left the shoe, left the ring omg my hair etc.. we were about 2 hrs delayed. during that time we nailed some decent preparation images and detail shots. Once the actual ceremony was underway the rest was history, Formals were done in under 30 minutes as it was a small group and I ensured i moved quick before people started getting restless. Here is my favourite image from the bride and groom formals.

We went off camera for the formals, kept it smiple though 1 light above and directional, very soft lightsource and the rest was history, think i went as high as 1/2 power at one point the recycle times were bearable though so it all worked out. didn’t even need a lightstand, had @9970000 hand holding the light and that worked out perfectly.

I think i left montego bay about 9pm that night.. after grabbing a wendy’s double to stuff my face as I was unable to eat anything substantial all day Wendy’s… yuuuumm . Oh for the rest of the images please follow through to the gallery

With that out the way, lets get into the meat of the matter. The assignment was an all day event started at about 10:00 am and ended at approximately 6:00 pm. I will state the obvious I was shooting models, show casing swimwear by various designers at the moment the only one I can remember is Minka (love her work).

Equipment
I have not yet recieved my Softligher and Cybersync Triggers so I’m still on shoot through smith victor umbrella’s and poverty wizards.

Nikon D2h
sb-28-dx

and Keisha who had to deal with the heavy lightstand (to give me the positiong I required for my Lights, Without her non of those photos would be possible)

The Shoot

There were 4 Beautiful models and A whole lotta swimwear. keeping focused on this shoot was not an issue ( I jest it never is). The ladies knew what to do and needed little Artistic Direction So the shoot flowed very well so to speak.

I’ve posted my favored photo as a preview of what the output is like. Here I had the light overhead from left pushing light down on the subject. was at about 1/2 power distance doesn’t really count it was as close as it could be without being in the frame I love this shot the most because it reminds me of scorpion / subzero or reptile (i’m sure you recognize that pose if your gamer / geek of any kind)

Model: Debbie-Ann Willams
Makeup: Latoya Grindley
Photography: Gladstone Taylor

Here’s a link to all the photos published on the Jamaica-Gleaner.com

Difficulties faced on this assignment

• photoshoot took place when the sun was its meanest 12pm – 2pm so i was in constant search of shade and trying as best as possible to keep the sky out of my compositions. I pretty much had to max the shutter for all images, and work the aperature and light accordingly to expose at the luminance levels I wanted / needed

That was pretty much it in terms of problems faced. everything else i could have worked around.

Equipment Used:

• nikon d2h
• sb 28dx
• cactus poverty wizards
• smith victor lightstand and shoot through umbrella

as you can see i got a bitter sweet equipment list for the assignment. however could you tell that i was using a 10 year old dslr?? could you also tell that i did no retouching to the subject at all?? I’m just curious . Is there anything you think i could have applied in camera to get a better result lemme know what you thinking hit me up in the comments with your answers

p.s Yes my name is spelt wrong Gladestone.. dunno where that came from but hopefully it wont happen again.

Here I had the light camera left, about 2 feet away, at 1/4 power iso was about f6.3 and shutter at 80 or 100. An industrial sized fan was use to get the wind effect with the subjects hair. She loved it, They loved it, They’re happy and I’m happy that they’re happy. Me personally I’m never satisfied with my work I always see something that could be done better will do it on my next assignment of this nature though.