We’ve worked on several sessions with hairstylist Micaela Bartel so were very excited when she planned a session with hair models. She went for unique combinations of hair, skin and eye colour. Here are a few favorites …
Thanks to the team of people who made this session a great experience:
Micaela Bartel of A Captured Look - hair colour, cut and style
Chrissy Lambert of of Makeup Infusion - make up
Kelsey Vanderhorst of KV Bijou - jewellery
Jason recently was invited to shoot with other photographers in Vancouver at the beautiful Ironworks Studios. It’s always a treat for Jason to hang around with other photographers and take pictures of beautiful people. Thanks to Nick Beaulieu of The Other Angle Photography for organizing the event and to Britt Clancy for doing hair and makeup. Here are a few favorites:
The first thing Marie will tell you when she meets you is that she’s 80 years old. If she didn’t come out and say it, none of us would suspect it. She’s spunky and full of stories. She wanted some pictures so she could send them to her family “to let them know she’s still alive.” Here are two of her favorites and one from when she was 29 years old …
(Click to see final presentation complete with authentic period music)
We don’t write much about the why or how behind our photography. Most of the time it’s because we just don’t have time to and other times, it’s because it feels like we’d be tooting our own horn. I (Jason) decided to set up a personal project on my birthday a week ago for fun, some portfolio images and a way to get together and hang out with some other photographers. I will share some of the inspiration + process that guided the project.
The Idea:
I knew about the Power House at Stave Falls in Mission from an Abbotsford Photo Arts Club get together years ago - it really stuck in my mind as I know of no publicly accessible buildings around us that are like it. The era in which it was the building was completed (1912) informed the look that I wanted for some models. Online archives had many examples of images from the early 1900’s that I used as inspiration. The goal for the final images was to have them be reminiscent of early 1900’s portraits with a modern twist.
Clockwise, starting from left:
Kelsey (model), Chris (photographer), Lara (photographer), Mark + Elizabeth (photographers), Amber (model), Jenn (model), Mike (photographer), Me
Arrangements:
Setting everything up in two weeks was a challenge, but I managed to book three models, a hair stylist and a makeup artist, as well as 5 other photographers. We couldn’t find a wardrobe stylist so I took care of the clothing and accessories. Hair, makeup and clothing were based on original photographs from 1910-1930 that I found online.
The Shoot:
Lighting was done with a strobe light into my home made beauty dish, mostly up higher than the model and pointing down towards their faces. This was done with a slow shutter speed to slightly make the subject stand out from the environment. Sometimes a backlight was used to separate the subject from the background as well. I make sure the lighting and exposure is good in the camera before anything enters the computer - even though I knew I was going to be spending significant time working on the images later.
Final Images:
Many historic photographs that inspired the final images contained texture, were yellow toned with variation, and had a frame/mat of some sort. My post production includes these elements in some way. All the textures, toning and mats were all custom made - textures were from old baking pans (see below), the toning is a gradient map with variations in saturation, and the mat was developed in Illustrator and finished in Photoshop.
Here is the link to the slideshow. I was very happy with how the final images turned out and will be using the images for my portfolio on www.jasonbrown.ca.
We enjoyed doing the photography for Take the Challenge Total Makeover contest earlier in 2009 and are looking forward to being one of the sponsors and doing the makeover photography in 2010. Go Fusion Fitness in Abbotsford is currently accepting entry forms and will choose 20 lucky contestants to take part in the contest. There’s more information and the entry form here.
Jason and I watched part of The Biggest Loser yesterday and thought we’d post this for those of you who have been neglecting yourself lately and want to make some changes. We were blown away by the transformations we witnessed last year and the positive feedback the women who participated gave to the whole challenge. Here’s a few pictures of last year’s top 5 contestants.
Cori was the winner. She lost 37.2 pounds and 36 inches. She now is a partner at Go Fusion Fitness.
Valerie lost 29.2 pounds and 27.75 inches.
Gitta lost 32.4 pounds and 26.25 inches.
Trish lost 22.4 pounds and 29 inches. She’s a sponsor this year and will be doing video coverage of the contest.
We have enjoyed having Gurbir join us after school a few days a week for the month of November. He is a star student at W.J. Mouat in Abbotsford and is interested in photography among many other things. Since he’s been working with us, he’s done a Global Issues Symposium for Youth through the Red Cross and also did a 24 hour vow of silence to raise awareness for Free the Children.
He wanted to catch a glimpse of the behind the scenes things that happen at a photography studio so that’s what we’ve been giving him. Unfortunately, most of what we do isn’t taking pictures but on Friday we decided it was time we let him do a little shooting. (I also wanted a new profile pic for Facebook.) So we set up some lights and did a mini photo shoot at our studio. Here are a few of the pictures …
Jason always looks forward to going on shooting sprees with other photographers and talking shop. He recently met up with a group in New West to play around with off camera flash.
The benefit of using a flash off camera is that it allows the photographer to isolate the subject by darkening the background. Jason is forever trying new things like below in the shot of the guy in front of the ivy - he put a red gel over the flash to turn the wall red. It gives it a whole different feel than if it was just an ivy wall in natural light.
If you’re into off camera flash, a website that we are inspired by is Strobist.
We’ve been patiently waiting for the right person + place to do a trash the dress session. When we photographed Jenn + Elger’s wedding this summer, we knew Jenn was the right person!
We met up with her by the Veddar River + just so you know the water was freezing and full of fish. I think there were about 100 people fishing a short ways up the river from us. Jenn was a trooper + climbed a tree, scaled some rocks, stood on a log, stood in the freezing river + floating in the icky, black part of a stream.
Jason did some post production of the images to bring out the blue tones. I think they have a bit of a moon lit look to them which suits Jenn. Here are the favorites …
Here’s a link to a behind the scenes video of Jenn, Jason + oodles of fish in the Veddar River. Please leave a comment + let us know if you’d like to see more behind the scenes clips of our sessions.
One of the best parts of our job is getting to meet so many interesting people and hearing stories of where they have been and where they are going with their lives. We have photographed Carrie’s sons before and she came back this summer to get some portraits of herself done to capsulize how she looks at this point in her life.
I’m sure one day her grandkids will looks back at them and try to imagine what she was like and compare if they look at all like her. I’ve done the same with pictures of grandparents and find old portraits to be a treasured part of my heritage. Here are a few of Carrie …
We just returned mid-week from a 10 day vacation at Green Lake in BC. It’s near 70 Mile House and my parents have a cabin there that used to be my grandparents’ that we’ve been going to since I was a teenager. The kids look forward to it all year and gauge the passing seasons by reciting all the birthdays and holidays in a year followed by “…and then we’ll go to the cabin” for summer.
I posted a bunch of pics of the trip on my Facebook profile and my cousin left a comment under one saying that she set it as the background on her computer. I thought that was a great idea! So we put together a selection of our favorite scenics for you to choose from. Feel free to use them on your computer’s background. If you would like to use them for something else, please contact us.
Just click on the thumbnails to view the full, 1024px x 768px screen size image on a new web page. Right click and select “Set As Desktop Background”.
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If you are looking for some art for your wall, we will be selling gallery canvas wraps of these photographs. They start at $130 for 18″ and go up to $725 for 60″. Our gallery canvas wraps are gorgeous and on a stretcher ready to hang with satin lamination for protection and a 2.25″ side wrap. Please phone 604-864-6339 or email for more information. This is a limited time offer until August 10th.
