Eventually I come across ( what looks to me like ) a gypsy accordion player. We talked a couple of minutes, found out that he was not a gypsy but had a dark skin and was subject to discrimination for it,  he wanted to know what was the point of me taking his picture ( i.e. if i make money of the picture ) and quickly agreed to have his picture taken. He has that “something” in his eyes, serious , sad … something …

The lighting is a combo of low exposure ambient light ( used for a general fill and a rim light ) and a flash diffused through a softbox used as the key.

Angry things come in small packages .

That being said, my girlfriend brought me to a really cool Cafe called Extrablatt, where they serve breakfast and have and open bar buffet at lunch, a private smoking lounge ( indoors … finally ! ) ,  rather dim tungsten lights in the evenings to make the mood just right, good music and and wi-fi . They are situated near the “Wilmersdorf Arcaden” entrance that is close to the Bismarckstraße Metro exit. So come by … and have a coke and a smile

Ze Germans …

So far, all of the German people I’ve met have been friendly and very cool. Contrary to popular belief, they are warm people, who like to interact with tourists, so much so that on occasion they will start a conversation with you out of thin air, inquiring about where you are from and so on. They are respectful and appreciate good manners, and any act of kindness will be well received. A good amount of people speak English, some of them pretty well and most of them speak it just enough to help you out when searching a street or something. Drinking is allowed here in the streets and in the public transportation system, although I’ve only seen people drinking publicly in the evenings, and that’s fair and most welcome.

My Place

At the moment, I live in the west part of Berlin , at the north side of a district called Charlottenburg near the Halemweg Metro station in a loft / studio apartment on the roof  of a 7 story building and the view is spectacular ( not for the people that are scared of heights ).

If any of you creative people live in Berlin, feel free to drop me a line, maybe we can spawn some art together.

Cheers.

The sun was just rising and the sky was full of clouds, which meant the ambient light won’t overpower my flashes and the sky is closer in exposure range compared to the ground. I usually hate shooting in the mornings because the light get’s worse and worse by the minute, and unfortunately this morning wasn’t different, except for a couple o minutes when the sun came out form behind the clouds and illuminated the background from the left and i quickly adjusted my aperture and my shutter and shot a test frame , a frame with the donkey and another frame to be sure i have backup material to correct for any focus or texture problems that may occur (and that’s a good practice by the way).

I hope you enjoy it , Cheers !

Shooting people in love

Easy like Sunday morning ! First of all they were actively participating in distracting my subjects ( the Lucherini brothers) and making them laugh, which in turn made my job easier, and at the same time became comfortable with the process of a photo shoot … So, when push came to shove … they were shy and not really eager to stand in front of the camera … until they connected and forgot that i was even there. Suffice to say they didn’t really care, and that works fine for me. I got true emotion on those frames and that’s what it’s all about.

I learned more in 2010 than in the past 5 years … so yeah … it as a good one from a creative stand point . So given the amount of spare time I’ve been having lately I decided to push for one last retouched frame …

Making of …

I gave this a little bit of thought … figured some people may wish to see how the final shot was achieved.

I started with 4 pseudo brackets from the initial raw, and progressively color corrected and retouched the image … leaving the tiniest details and local sharpening for last .

( Retouch Workflow )

Hope y’all like it … cheers

So, me and my buddy Andrei, decided to grab our gear and head for the park at night … in hopes that we may find some skaters or rollers or something. None of those were around … but what we did find was a blonde girl that had a big white fluffy dog. This story … is not about her, or her fluffy dog.

The ocasional gem …

As we were shooting … out of nowhere a couple of gipsy’s came and started playing with the dog and asking for money … I thought i’ll snap a picture of the gipsy girl begging … and luckily Andrei took notice of my intention and moved to the camera right with a bare strobe just in time for me to fire my one and only shot. Unfortunately other photo shoots took priority and I never got to this photo and eventually forgot about it … until now.

This shoot wasn’t planned in depth, as i had only some basic ideas of where i wanted to go with it … and it was planned for an indoors location. It was supposed to take place after my birthday “party” was over , but , as fate would have it we ended up partying much more than anticipated, and we also slept in till noon. The photo shoot was canceled.

Subject and Idea …

My subject is a rather hardcore hip-hop fan but also very sensitive and feminine … clearly those two don’t mix and match very well, and just by speaking to her you get the feeling that there is a battle deep within over what part should take over. I had planned  a more illustrated approach for this shoot and ended up never doing it due to lack of time … but … walking along the seaside ( taking in the sights ) we ended up in a parking lot overlooking the sea that was being converted into a plaza, there war hardly any people around due to the really bad weather ( cloudy and extremely windy ) … so it kind of hit me … a rather metaphorical approach to that inner battle … crosswinds.

The shoot …

Given the highly windy condition , and the lack of manpower i had to use bare strobes and exposed her face as close as possible without loosing too much information anywhere else. Retouching took a couple of hours.

I hope y’all like it, cheers.

Young people in their teen years are usually cranky, and moody and easily bored … and instead of going against their natural ways, and posing them in some attempt to create a perfect shot  … embrace them … after all you are trying to capture their true personality. I applied this theory in this shoot and i believe it truly brought the shot i produced to life.

Emma, Matteo and Alice

Shooting for location specific print

The initial idea for this shoot was to produce a shot that would go on a specific wall inside a doctor’s office. A slightly blue tinted gray paint ( very reflective ) covered all the walls of the office space, and all the painting that were hung there were saturated and alive.  I tried to keep the desaturated look to preserve continuity with the wall and at the same time have enough color to blend it in with the other frames in the office .

In time …

I plan to shoot them again in 5 and 10 years … in the same formula … to see the way their expressions mature as they grow … it should be interesting

The Shoot

Even though we had planned two locations to shoot in, we ended up only shooting in one … in an apartment. I hung a sheet of grey material on the curtain support that was long about 8 meters … to be sure i get the feet on the gray as well, and i doubled the material on its self near the window to be sure that no ambient light passed through.

Then i balanced the distance from my key light to the background in order to get it to ballpark middle gray and the subjects properly exposed. The photos were to be used in compositions so a gray background was essential so the extra work really payed off.

I set up the back light with a gobo to ensure that no color contaminated my background and i was set.

We shot two sets of clothes, a cyber set, and a formal set … the images that follow are from the formal one.

The Band

The band has four members : Shade, Olympia, Just and Zerohm. Unfortunately i didn’t have enough time to retouch a photo of Zerohm. I’ll probably post one later

Shade

Olympia

Just

Fun

Even though this was a serious shoot, we all had a blast, they were all funny and relaxed which made my job ten times easier.

Group Shot

If you want to have a taste of their music then check out their WEBSITE or their MYSPACE .
Hope y’all like the shots … cheers !