brandonwong's blog: April 2009

Tikko Studios was kind enough to throw a little lighting workshop for all the photographers in Southern California. It took place in their relatively new studio and man does their place make me jealous. Models Jeramee Lopez and my man Robert Ryu came out to support and do their thing. Unfortunately I came to a corrupted and half empty compact flash card so most of my pictures were missing, but here are some that managed to survive.

Friends Melissa, Brian, and Scott Roeder tagged along too. If you check their blogs all of them should have pictures from the event up as well.

Tigran of Tikko Studios

Erich Chen of Erich Chen Photography

Louis of Tikko Studios

Katrina came along too and also snapped a few frames

Last year around this time was my first meeting for the New University newspaper as an interning staff photographer. During that meeting a guy walked in with what I thought at the time to be a huge camera bag. The friendly person sitting next to me whispered to me, "That... guy is pro" and pointed at him. This "guy" was Scott Roeder. He certainly looked professional with his huge camera and big long white lens, even a little intimidating (my words for a 1D Mark IIn and a 70-200 2.8 back in the day). Little did I know I in two weeks I would be tailing him on my first sports assignment shooting baseball in freezing weather. Scott doesn't know this, but for me that night was a defining moment in my photographic career. This was not because of the wealth of information that he was sharing to me, but for the fact that I now had someone to look up to.

He is motivated, driven, and hard working. He will do whatever it takes to get a shot. Whether it means hiding from the servicemen in the high catwalks of arenas so he could get a different angle on the game or borrowing everyone and everyone's equipment that is needed for the shoot (had to throw this one in here buddy).

Today I am blogging about a portrait session for freshman volleyball player Carson that he was on assignment for today. This is unusual, but I'll throw in some of the technical aspects of off-camera lighting that we used today. Ready? Three. Two. One. SHOOT!

It's a big task to manage the entire photo shoot by yourself. Everything and everyone must be exactly where they need to be. Punctuality and precision are key. We arrived thirty minutes before to shoot but most of the time one must get there an hour or two to get everything arranged. Luck favors the prepared. What you see behind Scott is a Profoto strobe with a soft box. This will be the key light, or main light in this picture.

The sports editor bought red fabric from Michael's a few minutes before the shoot. We decided to mimic the famous Dwight Howard superman picture, except this time using a volleyball in an empty stadium.

Since this is a big stadium, there will be significant light fall off due to the power of the strobes. If we want Carson to have some form in the picture we will definitely need a second strobe to light him from behind. This model is a White Lightning. Why do we have a Speedlite behind it? That is a long story that I wont delve in to, but I have to say it's due to Scott forgetting his remote triggers for this baby.

Shoot low and wide. This will make the person you're shooting seem like Michael Jordan easily.

Love the shadows in this picture.

The shot in action without the strobes. I tried dragging the shutter (slowing down the shutter speed) to catch it but I failed.

Checking out the results.

This was the second portion of our session. We set up a four foot long grey backdrop and used the same Profoto strobe with a soft box as the only source of light in this picture besides ambient. The soft box creates a soft (duh) light over the subject while also controlling the spread of light so it doesn't bounce to places you don't want the light to go.

I decided to snap a few frames before Carson went back to his practice. Shoot with the soft box closer to the model's face and you get a dramatic picture with dark shadows. If you want a cool picture, just use one light. This picture was straight out of the camera. I. Love. Dark. Shadows.

And I leave you with this. BAM!

When I first met Scott all I knew was how to hold a camera and change settings.

I never knew that within a year I would be in the position I am in today.

To see the finished work, please visit Scott's blog. Unfortunately/fortunately I am a faster blogger than he is so it might take awhile until his pictures get posted up.

In the meantime, his portfolio site can be found here.