Joker's Child Photo Shoot

I had the chance this week to do some photos for a local rock band called Joker's Child. They were looking for some shots that they could use to promote their band with posters, prints and their MySpace page. I haven't done a lot of music photography yet but definitely have a lot of interest in it so I jumped at the chance hoping to get a few good images for my portfolio.




Shelley and I met with Kasey (the singer/guitar player) and Tim (drummer) a couple of days before the shoot to get some ideas of what they were looking for. They play some original material and cover songs and most of their influences are 80's hair bands. That worked well for me - I listen to a lot of the same music and used to play those songs in bands in what is starting to feel like a lifetime ago.




After the meeting, Shelley and I toured around Belleville a bit to find some outdoor locations that would work. We found a half dozen or so that we liked for this project and settled on four spots. Fortunately, the guys in the band were really easy to work with and believed that we had a good idea of what would suit them.



So after two hours and a few hundred shots (not to mention a couple of wardrobe changes - and two pairs of wicked big boots for Dagger Dave) later, we had some good material to work with.

These are some of the ones we liked best and I added an updated version of their logo for use on the promo posters. We're also working on a new Myspace page design that should be up shortly.

Rock on.

Studio Shots with my Favourite Models

With hockey (finally) on hiatus for the summer and a couple of weeks before my next race, I've been trying to stretch my horizons a bit and take shots that need a bit more preparation before hand.

In the rink and at the race track, it's pretty much find a good spot that I like, get the camera settings right and blast away at whatever catches my eye. But I've been reading and watching a lot on photographers that are good at working with light. Joe McNally is an absolute master at it. I picked up his book "The Hot Shoe Diaries" and now believe that it is possible to make stunning photos with small strobes.

Anyway, I've been putting together a make-shift studio in the basement that hopefully before the summer ends will become a more permanent version and started using some of the tricks that I learned to make some 'studio' type shots.

Here are some of the ones I like the best...

This little beauty is my wonderful (and very patient) daughter Taylor. It's great to have a model living right in the house. She isn't really a model but we definitely treat her like one.

The other beauty is my charming (and equally patient) wife Shelley.

These were all shot with a Nikon D700 with a 24-70 mm 2.8 or 70-200 2.8 in the studio using one SB-800 for light shot into a bunch of different diffusers. The shots on black had the SB-800 shooting into a 4'x3' piece of white foamboard (slightly camera right) and a silver reflector on camera left to bounce some of the light back into the shot. I used the 70-200 on those shots. For the shots with the white/grey background, I shot the SB-800 through an umbrella (camera right) and used the silver reflector to splash a bit of light back in.

That's it for now. More to come.