One of the great things for models is they get to play “dress up”, when working in various shoots. As a photographer, I am always on the lookout for interesting clothing and accessories to shoot with. Take for example the middle photo of Sarah. I had been searching for early sixties style clothing to work with as I like the sophistication that Jacqueline Kennedy brought to that era with her clothing style. Hitting eBay, I slowly started gathering lots of clothing from that era and it is quite inexpensive. Everything in that photo maybe amounted to $30 and the great thing is I can resell it on eBay since it is vintage wear and still retains some value. It also allows me to create a photo that doesn’t look the same as every other photographer is shooting as far as styling.

As Sarah and I were shooting in downtown Seattle by Pioneer Square, Tina, the owner of Synapse 206 asked if we wanted to shoot with some of her great clothing and of course we agreed. Her store features one of a kind designs and it was great to experiment with the various styles, especially that blue dress in the first image. We basically had the run of the store and Tina was a great help in picking out styles for us to match with various accessories. Though I wasn’t too hot on the hat in the third image, I went with it.

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Ocho Tv finished production on a special hosted up on Ujena.tv. You can see a short interview with me at the 13:10 mark.

Last night I created a portfolio book in Aperture 2.0 to send out to an editor that I have been interested in showing my work to. I wanted to then show the work to readers, but my challenge was to not just throw up large jpegs, as the content is some of my better swimsuit shots from the past year or so. So, I then went on a journey to find a great flip book type of application that would allow readers to see the images, but also have some protection from right clickers.

FlashPageFlip.com has a free app, that is simple to setup and was exactly what I was looking for. Maybe some day I’ll need a more robust app, but for now, I am happy with the way this product works. The only trick is setting up your book, so the images look uniform across each page. It also scales, so those with different desktop settings can see the book without scrolling.

Click on image to open up the book. Comments appreciated.

Photoshoot with Edna on the beach in Mexico

More bikini shots of Edna on the Beach in Mexico

Edna, from Guadalajara, was an amazing model to work with. These were shot in October 2008, in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. Primarily shot with both a 50mm 1.8 and a 180mm 2.8. I love the clarity and contrast in a prime lens and these photos were more than I expected coming out of my Nikon D300. I really like to hear any feedback on these images.

See more of Edna on my Playing on the Beach Post

Caro, Yamile and Edna

In October 2008, I had the opportunity to work with some amazing models for a week in Mexico. These beauties had such a fresh and positive attitude and were excited about being in front of the camera. One evening I asked Caro, Yamile, Edna, Paty and Ana to come down to the beach for a quick shoot. We only had about an hour, due to a busy schedule, but I wanted to get all these models together and capture some of their personalities without having to be “Models”.

I was inspired by Raphael Mazzucco’s Book, “Exposure”, that he had shot for Sports Illustrated. I just wanted the girls to play on the beach, roll in the surf and sand and have a fun time in front of the camera. I was able to get over 700 images in the short time I shot this and this is a sample of some of those shots.

In the next few weeks I will be including more HQ images from shoots with each of these models. Let’s just say they were all amazing to work with, from shooting on the beach in San Jose del Cabo to the narrow streets of Todos Santos.

Technical Info: They were shot with a Nikon D300, using natural light and ISO 200. Most of the shots were with my favorite portrait lens, the Nikon 50mm 1.8. The sharpness and contrast is simply amazing. For some of the wide angle shots, I used a AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED, lens. Not my favorite lens, but it gets the job done for the wide angle shots. Most aperture settings were from f/3.2 to f/8. White balance was probably custom or cloudy, to boost the skin tones.

Beautiful women on the beach

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