Fashion On location with Designer Naoise

The underlying them of the shoot was an autumn winter theme to help shocks the pieces designed and hand made by Naoise. Shooting on location fashion always poses a challenge, for the look myself and Naoise were going for to show case her clothing designs created a few extra challenges. However using some amazing kit from Elinchrom these were over come.  The weather in Ireland at this time of year can be desperately poor, so shooting out doors would be a problem. With this in mind the location was chosen indoors, to give an urban feel and contrast with the clothing. 

Each shot was taken using a single Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with a Portalite 56cm octabox for lighting. During the shoot we shoot Three looks most of which were shoot indoors at out first location in powers court shopping centre, while other were shot outside on the surrounding streets.

The first look was made up of a white shift dress with hand beaded japenese shibori detailing, a grey polo neck jumper under the dress, along with a pale pink fur scarf and the same shade pink swollen gloves. The neutral toned shoes were picked to finish the look but not detract away from the dress. 

The second look was made up of a custom hand printed puffball skirt and a matching quilted crop top with knitted details, the look was finished off with some suede boots.  This Look was a complete contrast of elements. The environment, the vibrant and intricate patterning on the dress and the hard, dishevelled walls of the building we were in really wok well together,  all these element really helped make the dress really stand out from the backdrop. 

For the third and final look we moved on to the streets.  For this we also decided to shoot with two models to show how the clothing can fit a verity of body shapes. This Look was consisted of a maroon wool V neck dress with handmade japanese shibori detail on the shoulder and a custom printed panel. Paired with lilac trousers with a maroon stripe detailing on the side.

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Phantom Parkor

The aim of this shoot was to capture some action shots along with some portraits of Adam practicing parkour, At the time i was based in DCU which leant itself perfectly to the shoot. The high modern buildings acted really well as the back drop for this modern street art and discipline. Living there at the time I had plenty of ideas of where to shoot, but with the building of the new entrance with wooden poles this allowed me to create some unique shots.

A word From Adam " Phantom"

In the beginning I was a gymnast, I took it up during my fourth year in secondary school, and for a while I was really into it. I started training with my younger brother every weekend and as the club grew in people it moved to a bigger hall, giving it a chance to run more classes more regularly and eventually began running this thing called parkour. For a while I had been getting this feeling of being tied down with gymnastics, I never really got into the regimented style of it. I had been trying it outside for a while, applying it to what I could, trying all these movements outside with no mats or safety nets. When I finally joined this class all I could think was 'Wait, there's a name for what I've been doing?' and I suppose that's where the romance began. I was hooked and never missed a class, in fact it's probably justified to say that it was the only thing getting me out of bed on a Saturday morning. Eventually I struck out on my own, in search of others in the sport and in its wider community. All of this has lead me to where I am now. To me, parkour is more than a sport. It's more than a hobby, a past time or something that gets me out of bed on a Saturday morning. It's a movement, an expression and a liberation. It lets me be who I am and explore the boundaries of what I can or can't do. My favourite thing about it is how after starting it nothing looks the same again, the whole city scape changes in turn with your possibilities. With parkour, you take what has been built, the ugly, cold concrete and monolithic buildings, and you make it yours. It gives me freedom.

Product Photography

Product and still life photography, you might think it is easy and think to yourself, "how hard can it be to take a picture of an object that isn't moving?"

The answer, taking the picture is the easy part. There is a lot of set up for each shot, such as object placement, lighting and other small ascetic details. Sometimes it might be necessary to recreate a product, or certain things like condensation so we can work under studio lights with out a mess being created.

 This shot unlike many of the other is a single shot, and not composited. However a lot of editing is done in Photoshop to gain the desired effect and to clean up some imperfections, like scratches and dirt marks.  In this shot the condensation was recreated as real condensation isn't as aesthetically pleasing and is harder to work with under hot lights as the product will slowly heat up and the condensation disappear.

Bottle shots can be difficult, as the bottle  will reflect the light and cause dark shadows. Bottle shots take time in set up, to insure the lighting is correct.  The shot to the left is a single shot, using two lights and reflectors.  Here the bottle is placed on a white shiny surface to gain a slight reflection to add some depth to the photo. Selective doge and burning techniques have been used to emphasis logos and the edges if the bottle.

The shot to the left is a three shot composite, using one shot to light the liquid and main part of the bottle. the second to light the edges of try bottle, and the third shot a snooted flash used just to light the label. The shots were then composited in Photoshop to get the final picture.

This shot of a gold watch was by far the most complex shot to pull off.

Before shooting the watch was prepared, the glass was cleaned and the time stopped by pulling out the winding pin.  The watch was suspended via two lengths of string, the camera was positioned and the watch moved into the desired position, which must remain constant for this method to work.

This photo is a composite of five images. Four of the images were used to get the whole watch face in focus, this has to be done as the shallow depth of field caused by shooting so close to a small object.  The fifth image was taken when the winding pin was pushed back in. The images were then lined up in Photoshop and merged, taking only the in focus and best parts of each image.  The watch was then cut out and a new background inserted to gain the desired effect.