We photographed for designer Christopher Bates http://christopherbates.com/ last month in Toronto.
He was born and raised in Vancouver , but transplanted his business and his new mens line called “Ultra” in Toronto a few years ago.  We shot this series inspired by a screen shot from the movie, Bourne Identity.

I was commissioned by Falling for Scarlet’s lead singer , Lee Tomaschefski, to create a ‘gothic fantasy’ shoot for the band’s CD cover and press kit in late July. We decided to use the street entrance of Vancouver’s Hycroft Manor www.uwcvancouver.ca by the rear gates as the general location, setting up in the later afternoon.

You’ve heard the Scout’s motto, ‘always be prepared’ – and this definitely applies to location photography. This basically translates to bringing more than you expect to use because guaranteed something will eventually present you with a challenge to overcome.

We decided to illuminate the concrete wall behind them with a gelled strobe (it involved a chair and some precarious positioning of Adam, my assistant)  We could have neglected using this red gel,  however it may have missed the mark for that fantasy, epic  and gothic feel we were going for,  So always  BE PREPARED.. bring more than you think you need.

Final settings on a gridded strip light to manage fall off, a gelled red strobe: iso 250, f13.

So… Introducing Falling for Scarlet

From left to right Dave Muselman, Lee Tomas (Lead Singer) and Jay Deachman

http://www.fallingforscarlet.net

Local Vancouver kid Kyle Lescisin is an aspiring model, and he needed some pro images of him for some ammunition when hitting the Vancouver modeling agencies.

The challenge whenever shooting body, is to sculpt knowing where to place your lights. Having an awareness of lighting, specifically the direction of lighting, is paramount. If you light the body with the external strobes on the same axis as the camera, your subject will look too one-dimensional, and you can consequently create a flatter ( and indirectly ‘fatter’) body as a result. In order to show off Kyle’s washboard of abs, it was essential to set the lights ( hard light sources in this case, ie : dishes etc), from a 45

We also covered a fashion editorial series for www.mezzi.com last December for David in downtown Vancouver.

This series was based on an ‘Man of Mystery’ theme ala James Bond, using GM of Vancouver club Philip Ireland, who had an uncanny resemblance to the current Bond, Daniel Craig in some of the images. All of the frames were shot with strobe lighting, utilizing the dramatic sunset in the bedroom scenes as well.