When I introduced my style to other people, I was always trying to emphasize the non-traditonal part of my artistic soul, which means I wouldn't plan to do anything like many other photographers did before. Take model shooting for example, many photographers feel so confident and comfortable to do the studio or outdoor works with strobes and speedlights, while only a tiny pinch of them may really know why they truly need that or how they can use those when necessary. I didn't do studio works quite often. It's not because I can't or don't know how to do that, it's because I feel so limited to do something truly inspirational and non-traditional. Texture, dimension and mood, that's what I am looking for, and when only a blank white background behind you and model, plus a single wooden chair, what can I do to create anything I like, anything that looks a bit different?
Light sculpts my subject, and it doesn't matter what my subject is. I have seen enough poor-lighting and sponge-soft images in this modeling world that won the favors of models and clients. The photographers either never knew what made a "good" photograph, or they never cared and just tried their luck every time. I still remember my respectful mentor Cliff Mautner's famous quote about quality vs. quantity of the light. Take studio lighting for instance, it makes no sense one can create a better image with multiple top strobes plus huge soft box or beauty dish. A simple off-camera flash or video light is far than enough in myriads of situations to create stunning portrait images, and here are some of my primary trials. A simple directional light coming from my Nikon SB-900 added a lot of vibrance into the portrait of this lovely girl, which I believe is quite amazing for some demo works in my future workshops.
As a result, I split this simple modeling works into two halves for the first time in order to fully demonstrating how simple light setting plus subtle change of gestures and camera angles can bring out totally different looks even under such limited circumstance.
Special thanks are given to Aisha Lee, my beautiful model who made this work so easy and joyful ~~~
Enjoy ~~~
gorgeous
absolutely gorgeous photographs
Beautiful photos of a beautiful young woman.