As with most shoots, lighting is a key factor, and unfortunately when shooting on the beach, the glare from the sunlight can be blinding. Jeff did a great job trying to battle the ray being beamed into his eyes from the giant reflector that Tash was assisting me with. Great job “Squinty”…

Hit the gallery for the full shoot and don’t forget to check out the Human Statues online at www.thehumanstatues.com

Check out the gallery to see the entire shoot!

I drive across Granville bridge every morning on my way to work. This is the view that I see each time, and it’s even more spectacular as the sun sets on the far side of English Bay. The bridge in the photo is called Burrard Bridge and that connects downtown to Kitsilano and UBC areas. Just to the bottom right you can see the marina at Granville Island. In the distance  you can see mountains fading away in the sunset and the balance of nature meeting civilization is just breath taking…

3 hours in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and this is what I came up with:

We did the shoot as the sun set on second beach and were fighting for time because doing the makeup took a bit longer than estimated. Before we knew it, we had an audience watching us along the sea wall as I snapped away. It was great working with Shazmin because she really knows how to move like a model and it allows for the photographer to be able to capture each frame fluidly. Every model should learn what their good angles are and how to work with the photographer to flatter their strengths.

With the sun dropping quickly in the sky I had to think quickly because we were losing light. I decided to continue using the reflector, but fired my flash remotely off that to simulate the sun. It worked really well and I’m really happy with the results.

Since Vancouver isn’t well known for its beaches, I had to do a bit of post production to create that Carribean look and feel for the photos by changing the water and adding beach sand. You can see a before and after of what it was like. Check out the rest of the shoot in the gallery!

The second look Ashley wanted to create was a deconstructed look with the makeup. It was a fairly interesting shoot because we were battling the high winds of downtown Georgia St. The weather was fairly overcast and running around with softboxes and strobes made it that much harder. This part of the shoot was accomplished commando style. We used the water feature in front of Shangri La Hotel and it proved to be a great location. The water feature  is only a few centimetres deep, but creates the illusion of it being very deep. After some very quick frames and splashing around I wrapped it up in the nick of time as security made their way down. Luckily they didn’t approach us… Check it out in the gallery page!

The famous Battle of Iwo Jima Memorial statue inspired this crazy concept. The idea was to create a jeans advertisement inspired by the pose that the soldiers were in, and to mix it in with a sexy twist without being disrespectful to the war veterans. It was a great shoot working with so many models and I have to say it was a lot of work pulling the final thing together.

Postproduction took more time than the shoot itself (nearly 3-4 hours per poster)… I was aiming to do a HDR (High Dynamic Range) postproduction to create that animated feel to it. All of the accessories like the ammunition chains, dog tags, grenades etc were photoshopped into the scene. The shot was a composition of the group against a white backdrop and then the environment was added in later. I shot each model individually so that I had a variety of poses to choose from and then I chose the best shots and chopped in the models into the shot. The hardest part about this sort of work where you are pretty much creating everything from scratch is the maintain photorealism and also make it believable. ie. making sure light sources and shadows are consistent etc…

Seeing the behind the scenes shots you can see how much work (and fun) went into this shoot! Let me know what you think!