Kelly Franks – POP ROX Band Lead Singer Portraits

Kelly Franks – POP ROX Band Lead Singer Portraits

Yes, Virginia

I had the opportunity to photograph Kelly Franks, a local singer, for the cover of her newest album “Yes, Virginia” which debuted on November 25th, 2011.

Check the album and listen to the track “Yes, Virginia” here » Follow POP ROX band on Twitter » Like POP ROX on Facebook »

The lighting for this set of images was a 28” Westcott Apollo softbox as an overhead light and a light with 7” reflector camera-right. I used 200W Elinchrom strobes for the lighting and Elinchrom Sky-port triggers to fire the lights wirelessly.

For the majority of the headshots I broke out my Lastolite tri-flector and had some fun playing with the angles in an effort to get a nice triple reflection in her eyes. With the Lastolite tri-flector I’ve found that using a light directly overhead and keeping each individual reflector at a near 90 degree angle to the chin and sides of the face (per each reflector). Check out a shot of how I was using the tri-flector.

Below are a few of the shots we captured that evening including the shot that was used for the album cover.

Modern Retro Fashion Photography with Des

Modern Retro Fashion Photography with Des

I’ve been terribly deficient in posting regular updates to the blog, the only good thing about that is that there is only room to get better about blogging!

Des and I got together back in October of 2011 to shoot a shot series of photographs. The clothing and styling were provided and take care of for us by stylist Tiffany B out of Bethlehem, PA.

Below are some of my favorites from the shoot!

Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Relaxing in Nags Head

After spending some quality time relaxing and shooting some photos in the small coastal town of Nags Head in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina I hooked up with Brodi and Gethin on my drive home to shoot some photos for general purpose use and for promotional material for their music.

When driving for 7+ hours it is sweet relief to have a break worked into your driving plans. Mine came as I rolled into Bridgeport, PA. It was a brisk, cool evening and the light was amazing. All the photographs I shot using a single light on a stand an toyed with what I could using the ambient light (what little there was) in the scene.

Brodi Valos

Brodi Valos is a talented and perpetually hard working musician/recording artist who performs throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with Philadelphia-based group Dirty Electrick. Brodi, who himself hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is recognized for his roots rock sense of style in fashion, performance, and in his music videos.

Inspired by classic music icons such as AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, & Ray Charles, and even my all-time favorite group, Social Distortion, Brodi creates a wonderful blend of Rock and Country in his tracks that you’re sure to enjoy.

Did He Just Say 'Ron Paul'?

Brodi is a man after my own spirit and, like myself, views Dr. Ron Paul as the best of the candidates for presidential election in the upcoming 2012 Presidential election as we rapidly approach the conclusion of the Republican Natl. Primaries.

Check out and ‘Like’ Brodi’s Facebook Page.

Gethin Lewis is a musician and guitarist from Philadelphia, PA who, along with playing music with Brodi, creates his own Psychedelic brand of music. A great personality and a bunch of fun to photograph!

We had a great time hangin’ out and shooting these photos and spent some time chatting after we put the camera down. Check out some of my favorites below!

Creative, Commercial Style Portraits with Model Diana Di Bella

Creative, Commercial Style Portraits with Model Diana Di Bella

As we wrap up and finish out year 2011 I’ve thought back on some of the crazier/more difficult (i.e. fun!) shoots of 2011, one of which would have to be Diana.

It was cold, rainy, and mildly windy in the earlier part of the morning but the clouds broke for us just before we’d scheduled to start shooting.

Uh-Oh

Our location had been plowed under and a field of corn replaced what had been a nice park-area to photograph in. As far as I could tell there was no park left and no getting into what had replaced it and I didn’t have much of a “plan B”, but I managed to find two small locations to shoot in very nearby which turned out to work great!

The rain came back and pestered us throughout the shoot, I dropped my camera in the mud a couple times, got mildly wet, slipped a few more times, and risked life and limb (well… at least the ‘life’ of the lighting gear) to capture some photographs.

Big thanks to my assistant that day (Good friend and photographer, Joe Joyce) for his portable tent which kept our model dry during shooting!

Let’s check out a few of the photos we got from that shoot.

...and a little behind the scenes too!

Model + Fashion in the Park - Bethlehem, PA

Distinct Pleasure

Yasmine is an talented and beautiful young Egyptian/Moroccan/Turkish college student(/model) attending college right here in Eastern Pennsylvania. I had the distinct pleasure of working with her about 2 months ago shooting some general purpose portraits and was delighted with how they turned out!

There was a bit of rain in the forecast for the date we'd picked to setup the shoot, but decided to press on and make it happen rain or shine! Typically when a shoot gets cancelled due to the weather forecast, the weather man ends up being wrong and we get beautiful weather, it's only when we decide to ignore the forecast that the forecast stands true! We ended up with a very cloudy sky that morning and there was a brisk breeze which occasionally cut through our location all the while we were shooting further enhancing the cool/damp early-autumn air and, in the end, combining to make beautiful shooting weather throughout our shoot. It worked out wonderfully and we got lots of very soft, wrapping light! Photographer's dream!

Yasmine did a great job and totally rocked the shoot! Check her out over at her profile on Model Mayhem which is located here.

Below are a healthy spattering of a few of the shots which I loved most from that rainy and overcast morning in Bethlehem.

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

I am preparing for a series I want to shoot over the course of the winter which was inspired by a specific type of advertising (It's a secret!). In my preparation I had a model come in and shoot with me as I nailed down some of the final lighting tweaks, hair and make up issues, as well as worked the post-shoot, post production workflow to ensure a consistency in the looks produced by the various shoots for the series. Nikki came out and shot with me and was absolutely great!

If you're interested in modeling for me feel free to submit an application at http://www.endyphoto.com/models I'll consider anybody!

Check out a couple of the images we captured that day below...

Model Portfolio Building Photography in King of Prussia

Portfolio Building

Getting together and shooting for a couple hours in the late evening often yields some pretty awesome results. Here we have a young model I photographed a few weeks ago in King of Prussia to help him build his portfolio with a variety of looks (we had a few other looks, but these few images happened to be my favorite).

Twilight is Golden Light

We hung around in the park where we were shooting until the sun set below the horizon and took advantage of some electric color in the sky, that coupled with some passing storm clouds which further added to the amazing color we had that evening.

Check out a few of the photos we captured below and I threw in a happy mistake which I converted to black and white. Sometimes complete mistakes turn out great!

A Summer Evening in Philadelphia

No Location, No Plans, Creativity At Its Finest

It’s a great change up to go out and have a fun morning or evening of photography without any idea of what you’re going to shoot until you get into a location, or a general area and wander until you find a location. I photographed Rachel a few weeks ago and we picked out her clothing and met on a street corner in the city and just wandered around taking as many photos as we liked until it was too dark to shoot.

Photography and Creative Control

What little plan I had going into this photo shoot was to just keep it simple and shoot some general purpose portraits of her. She didn’t have anything specific she needed other than general purpose head and full-length shots for a project she was working on and there was no strict set idea of what she had to have so that left plenty of room for creative liberty and control.

Camera, Lighting, and Technical Settings

Lighting was a Canon 580 EXII speedlite modified with Westcott’s amazing 28” Apollo portable (collapsing, umbrella style) softbox and a hand held reflector for a little fill as needed. Everything was shot using a 24-70mm lens and I believe I stayed between f4 and f8 all evening long.

Thanks Rach!

All things considered Rachel killed it, she was awesome and we got some great photos to show for it. Good times.

Natural Light Shooting

Natural Light Shooting

Penn University

A couple of weeks ago I photographed a student named Andrew Frechinella. He is attending Penn University in Philadelphia. I shot him on the UPenn campus in the University City district of Philadelphia. He’s wrapping up his very own PhD and was looking to try his hand at a bit of modeling.

I always love shooting in new locations, especially interesting new locations. The campus at Penn lacks no character, space, architecture, or visual interest of any kind. It’s a really great atmosphere. On campus has a certain look and feel, and only a few block from campus a very different look and feel, I love it! Versatility of location is always a major plus.

Wandering

We began the afternoon (very sunny afternoon) by wandering around outside of Penn first and explored some alleyways and streets and ventured onto the college grounds. Andrew was a rock-star, we took advantage of a construction site, empty café, and paparazzi’d a few random students (some of the best photos of the day, just kidding ;) ) and he killed it on campus, off campus, everywhere we went.

Production Shots

I really need to start taking some photos of myself taking photos… or rather have my assistant (typically my Uncle) handling a second camera and snapping some production shots so you can get a sneak peak, behind-the-scenes look at what I do. Maybe next time, there’s always (usually) a next time.

Technical Nonsense

Because of the insane sunlight (which is really not very good for great portrait photography) I stayed away from lighting anything with strobes or off-camera flash, instead I hung out with a pair of reflectors. A Westcott 6’ x 4’ reflector panel (Sunlight & Silver) as well as a smaller Silver & White 30” Lastolite reflector. In sunlight these things work like a charm and can light very well, put them in the hands of someone who can feather the light and make adjustments on the fly for you, and you’ve got a killer lighting setup; all with one measly little reflector (and one giant continuous light we call the sun).

I shot almost everything at f2.8 and around 1/200th of a second except when photographing into the sun; I adjusted for greater depth of field and stopped down to f8.0 and around 1/100th of a second for those shots. Throw in the reflector bouncing that intense sunlight back into the subject and you get great light. My ISO stayed at 100 all day.

I made a concerted effort to get away from shooting at a longer focal length this time around and stayed with my 50mm (nifty 50) and my 24-70mm f2.8. I miss the flat, compressed look of the telephoto but love the way it made me work using this lens and not having the 70-200mm to “fall back on”. Since that shoot, I’ve been using the 24-70mm a whole lot more. Objective. Completed.

Thanks!

A big shout out to Andrew for hanging around all afternoon with me and being totally cool with everything I asked him to do, job well done man! Also a shout out to my Uncle Chris for the excellent setup, reflector-holding, idea-bouncing, goodness; having an extra set of hands makes impractical or impossible shots practical and possible.