Jason Christopher, LA Commercial & Fashion Photographer Bio

Another successful fashion photography workshop. This time photographer Ken Davie came up from San Diego ! Super nice guy and very eager to learn. I LOVE when I get photographers in here who want to learn ! So with Ken his main issue was that he was intimidated when directing the model, make up artist and wardrobe stylist. Basically he needed to learn how to take charge of his own shoot which is not as easy as one might think.

We started off day one with Ken just observing me. He observed how I handled the photo shoot from start to finish. Started off with the make up process, discussing concepts for wardrobe and lighting.

We shot in studio and outdoors on location. Day two of the workshop I took Ken to an outdoor location. Obviously the best time to shoot outdoors is the last couple hours of the day. Well, when shooting an assignment you don’t have that luxury to only shoot in the last two hours of the day. When you have to shoot a catalog, editorial or advertisement you shoot all day. So I showed Ken how to shoot great photos at anytime of the day including mid day when the sun is at the worst possible position. By using scrims and placing the model in certain areas you can achieve great lighting at any time of the day.

Ken had come from a background of shooting product and he wants to make the switch to shooting people, a MUCH different process. Here are some results of Ken’s workshop. I have video but I am trying to learn how to edit it. If anyone would be willing to offer their service to edit please contact me.

High fashion photography

Beauty photo from my fashion photography workshop

So I just shot some new beauty photos. Most photographers use a beauty dish, however they can be expensive, especially for a photographer who is just starting out. What is the solution ? This photo was shot with just one small umbrella, a small silver reflector at breast level, and a strobe hitting the background with it’s regular 7 inch reflector attached for separation. I placed the umbrella camera right about 2-3 feet above model’s eye level. Of course you need to tell the model to be aware that this is her ONLY light source so do not turn your face away from it. Any good model of course would know this. This was shot at 125th @ F/8 , 100 ISO. The make up and hair artists were standing by right next to the model ready to jump in and make tiny little adjustments to hair and make up. When shooting beauty like this, it is VERY important to pay attention to EVERY detail, thus my team was stepping in every couple of minutes or so adjusting something.

Shooting outdoors scares many photographers.  It really shouldn’t though.  Think of it as recreating your studio light outdoors.  Yes you can use strobes but why lug out all that gear when you can achieve nice results with just one reflector, sometimes two.  My choice of color is white.  It looks the most natural and you can just use a piece of white poster board.  The larger the poster board, the softer the light because the source projects a broader spectrum of light. So in this example I was lighting my subject from head to toe.  I opted for a 6 foot tall white board, very inexpensive btw.  My assistant was standing  about 15 feet away from the model, which is far however he had no choice because the model was sitting under the roof of the stables.  So my assistant moved away until he caught the sun.