Fashion & Portraits

Quick post to pull everything together before moving forward.

The day in Espoo last week was amazing. One can only hope that it helpped everyone involved! My portfolio certainly got a huge boost.

Next stop, something simple.

There is couple of styles of photography I do not think much of. One of  them is these cars&babes kind of photos. You know exactly what  I mean! A-Ford, cool model,  stylish outfit, awsome hair and makeup they just had to go into the same  frame..

Model: Henna Mäkinen
Styling: Maiju Siekkinen
Make-up: Noora Hautakangas

The prop I druled over and waited to shoot for better part of the month was the A-Ford. As it -of course- turned out the car was a pain in the ass to work around. With uncontrollable specular highlights and the blue paint job that sucked up all the light! There was no way I could have made my lightsource relativly huge compared to the  car nore have more power out of my SB units.

First I sat on Monica on the drivers seat and shot from outside, what a mess! Too much stuff in the frame and not enough lights (?.)  Monica was cracious infront of the lens and she made even the bad frames to look good.  It was obvious that  wasn’t going to get the pics I was after.  Asked if she would not mind to model for Janne on the seemless for some time and then come back to me. The arangement gave me time to sort things out wihtout having a model being bored to death by f-stops, flash ratios and diffusion..

She came back and I put her on the back seat of the car. One ezybox is on the drivers seat held by VAL (Janne) as a mainlight and the second ezy is back left in the rear window coverd with a scrim. Flare is caused by the sb80dx and sb600 3-4 meters from the windows zoomed out.

I felt awsome! I had to hold my self back not to scream when I looked at the image from the back of my D200! I made true comeback! Stuggeled,  bailed out on time and came back with one of the best images I have ever shot! “Shoot, suffer,die” says da man and I tell ya, I could have died happy after this shot.

Model: Monica Menniti
Make-up: Noora Hautakangas
Styling: Maiju Siekkinen

It tried to start this blogpost with a sentence “Maiju Siekkinen is a…” Had it there for 1o minutes and hit delete. I have no words to discribe her and it would not make a difference if this was written in finnish. How the hell she came up the zippers? Don’t know. Looks great!

Being able to work with someone like her has taken my photography to a whole another level in just months. The concepts, the models, the ideas, the energy, everything she has brought to me has turned to gold in the camera.  I hope the D200 -or as I call her the grand old lady- and I can return the favor and produce pictures that helps as well.

More about Maiju coming up. I convinced her to write a blog post about the outfits you’ve seen in the blog. Her side of the story in a way.

Model: Monica Menniti
Make-up: Noora Hautakangas
Styling: Maiju Siekkinen

We got to the location about fifteen minutes late from what we aimed at but who cares. Henna wasn’t feeling too good so she fell a sleep on the meeting room chair for first hour or so. They had to wake her up for subtle makeup, some hay on the hair and a light scarf.. Hay! I think it worth waking up for..

It all worked very nicely on tightly cropped shots. The lighting is a clamshell setup with a touch of hair light held by Janne. I could have had even more power from the bottom flash thou..

Model: Henna Mäkinen
Style: Maiju Siekkinen
Make-up: Noora Hautakangas