Taka タカ model practice shoot

Model - Taka タカ

Taka is your average lad, and it is his first time doing a photography session. In the beginning, he was a bit rigid, but after some good photos, he wasn't as tense and was able to be his usual self

Location

• Tarumi 垂水
• Arima Onsen (Hotsprings) 有馬温泉

Gear

• 5D3
  • 24-70mm 2.8, 85mm 1.2 (ND8), 50mm 1.4
  • Speedlite 600EX-RT with ST-E3 radio trigger
• Lighting
  • 2 lights without modifiers
  • As its a practice model shoot, I was keeping the lighting setup to be as simple as possible. Thus, most shots are shot with
    • 45 degrees facing the model, top to bottom when space allows
    • I'll add in the details if the lighting setup is different along the post

Theme

I wouldn't call it a theme, but in general, cool, guy pictures, with an essence of the bad guy

Tarumi 垂水

Started as a bright sunny day, but the clouds came in later which helped a lot.

Ran into a slight problem where I thought the batteries were charged but turns out it has discharged itself and had some time wondering what went wrong. So glad I always bring spare/extra accessories, not just batteries

Changed the batteries and everything was normal again. Normal meaning near 1s charging time as I was shooting at 1/1 against the sun

You can see where the light is coming from the shadows

Tarumi was a good and fun place to shoot! Especially with the bridge at the background. Time flew real fast... Wish I had more time there

Arima Onsen 有馬温泉

Tourist locations... people! Most of the time we had to wait for people to pass by and luckily while you're in Japan, the locals are kind enough to wait and have fun looking at the photo session

Some of the places were really tight, and my assistant had a difficult time hiding herself. Luckily though, its a tourist location, my model and assistant ended up looking at the attractions which really helped tense things down

Taka was getting used to modelling and was posing automatically without much directions

Tight space. Originally asked Taka to stand right beneath the shelter but the lights couldn't reach and it was too tight to hide it. Moved 2~3 steps back and got this shot

I have always wanted to shoot in a tight alley!

1 backlight, 1 light from right. Really really tight

We signaled for them to go along but they decided to stay and watch for a while

I like this shot, feels like a titanic movie

Tip on dark locations

Taka was getting tired and I tried my best to finish this last scene. This is a rather dark place to shoot in. Assistant was holding an iPhone with its LED lights turned on to achieve focus and then turning it away before the shutter press

Manual Focus

A nice tip during dark shoots where your camera has problem focusing on the subject's face, is to use Manual Focus

The iPhone LED lights are used so that you can see in the dark

Another way is to use your camera's live view. As you focus on the subject, the live view will compensate for the dark scene and try to shoot a bright photo. It's 50-50 chance that the focus hits correctly, let alone focusing on the eyes of the subject. Better than nothing

Using Live view mode on any camera drains the battery real quick, remember to turn it off!

After Snaps

No lights