backstage access
for this session of dapper, we wanted to give our viewers a peek behind the scenes of a typical shoot, albeit in a stylized manner.
many thanks to my 2 wonderful stylists for all the hard work, all the beautiful models who have graced our shoots and all who have helped in one way or another through the year. been hell of a journey.
to view the rest of my lifestyle/fashion portfolio, click here.
in the still of the night
above are photos from the latest installment of dapper. we initially had the idea to do a night shoot, before narrowing it down the final theme.
credits to ivan for the colour toning. i think that gave the images a fantastic mood and feel to them.
for my fashion+lifestyle portfolio, click here.
dapper selects (so far this semester)
here are some of my favourites from the dapper shoots so far this semester. really great to be working with carina, audrey, ahmad and yudi again. of course, we warmly welcome into our midst ruiqi who will be doing hair/make-up (something that we did not have last semester). the shoots are always so enjoyable, and though they are sometimes physically and mentally taxing, i am sure we all look back and agree that the effort spent was well worth it.
many thanks to our models too. you all make the pictures.
a couple more issues to go!
for more posts on my photography, click here.
the runaway, found
styling: carina & audrey (another one in the bag!), models: shane & christine (thanks, guys!) and assisted by yudi.
shooting outdoors is always a challenge, but in many ways it is also more rewarding. you do your best to anticipate everything that can possibly go wrong and try to tame the variables that often seem to have a mind of their own.
sometimes, everything just seems to come together. so many things could have gone wrong during this shoot – the malaysian guard at the railway station could have raised hell; the sunset could have been unspectacular; worse still, it could have rained.
but none of those happened. the security guard was content to stay at his post. the ambient light was a beautiful mix of gold, pink and peach. the worst that happened was that we damaged a pair of heels, thankfully it wasn’t too expensive.
all the photos were shot with a 50mm f1.4. most of them were lit naturally with reflectors for fill except for the last one, where i had yudi (a fantastic assistant and photographer himself) fire a sb-800 into a gold reflector to light christine. the challenge with that shot was balancing the flash with the already awesome ambient light.
all photos were then treated in lightroom and photoshop to create the vintage look.
thanks to all who helped to make dapper a great success this semester! we have more interesting themes and concept planned for the next semester so be sure to look out for them. haters not included.
for more posts on photography, click here.
view my portfolio at www.chang-photography.com!
art of war
above is the final layout for the current installment of “dapper”. for readers who do not know what that is, it is basically the fashion spread that i shoot for the nanyang chronicle, a student-run campus newspaper that i am currently also working on as one of the photo editors. click here for a larger version of the page.
below are the 6 shots that went into this issue. note that the black backgrounds in all the 6 photos are not the original backgrounds. they were actually inserted after i etched out the 6 characters for the layout itself. the original backgrounds were quite bad even though we shot in a studio, largely because the backdrops available were not big enough that i could shoot full-body photos at a variety of angles without getting the rest of the wall and the pulleys for the backdrops in.
a word of advice to fellow photographers, if you ever intend to replace the background of your images during the post-process, shoot the subjects against a colour such as white, green or blue, or a colour that provides separation , so that the process can be expedited. i made the silly error of shooting against black. needless to say, it was hell to pay when i tried etching the individual figures out.
my deepest gratitude to tiffany and mark for agreeing to model for this shoot, to yusuf too for helping me to set up the lights and stand in as the test subject, and to victoria for doing hair and makeup. also, special thanks to everyone else who contributed gear and/or expertise to the shoot.
and of course, my 2 lovely stylists audrey and carina for working so hard on getting the clothes, doing the styling and layout. i think we are becoming a really solid team and i envision even greater things ahead!
for more posts on photography, click here.
*CHANG 