Here’s a little secret on how I find the hotels in which my photo sessions take place. I don’t search on hotels.com or any other major deal sites. Instead, I either Google for “boutique hotels” in the city I’ll be visiting, or search through tablethotels.com. Of course, exclusivity and uniqueness comes at a price I am willing to pay. I don’t want the next Joe S. with some extra change to spare to use the same location and produce mediocre results. After I find an interesting hotel online, I continue my research by looking at user photos submitted through tripadvisor.com, though I rarely read the written reviews - when it comes to photo shoots, I don’t care much about the view nor the service. I also try to submit as many photos to Trip Advisor as I can. You should keep in mind, choosing a hotel for a photo shoot is not the same as choosing where you want to stay for your vacation. A clean modern room might be boring for photos but easy on the eyes, while a tacky room might make you feel cheesy but produces far better results for photography.
One hotel I am legally not allowed to name, just in case they search for it. This resort is popular to celebrities and top fashion photographers, so they don’t allow other professional cameras on the premise. Although I was allowed to shoot my own model, I had to sign a waiver which included a few simple rules including not publishing any photos with guests in the background nor using the name of the hotel. This waiver prevents the hotel and I from being sued from celebrities that might have been captured in the image without their consent.
Whitelaw Hotel, Miami Beach, FL
Pelican Hotel, Best Whorehouse room, Miami Beach, FL
While I stayed at the Rockhouse in Negril, Jamaica. Tanya stayed at Idle Awhile, also in Negril. We met up after the wedding for a day of shooting. When you’ve been working together for over 3 years, nothing really stands in your way in terms of conflicts in style, ideas, or even clothes. I can only hope for many more years to come. She is like wine, only gets better with age. Tanya is afraid of the deep dark ocean, and on the day of the shoot, it was overcast and no sun came through even the shallow waters. She was brave enough to take a ride out on Famous Vincent’s glass bottom snorkeling boat, as well as standing a few feet away from a rocky ledge over the cliff, all for pictures’ sake.
The day started at Tanya’s balcony while it thunderstormed. We went back to the Rockhouse and for about $35USD each, we took Famous Vincent’s boat out to shallow waters in the middle of nowhere to shoot. Vincent was nice enough to maneuver the boat around based on what lighting I wanted. Afterwards we took a few shots on cliffs at the Rockhouse and then back to my outdoor shower.
I was impressed how we covered three locations on an island while it’s nearly impossible to cover two even back at home. I just think we are a very efficient and experienced team together.
I helped Yen Hoang start her first fashion portfolio to send to New York agencies. The photos are unstylized which is not the norm for me, but that’s the point of a portfolio, to showcase the model, not the photographer. The shots are straight forward with minimal editing. The photo shoot wouldn’t have been possible without the last minute efforts of makeup artist Jennifer Kang and Aya Fukuda.
I flew to Toronto this weekend for a wedding, and noticed a guest had a new DSLR with “Live View.” I believe it could be a useful feature for those hard to reach places, but it’s a feature that I personally would never care about as a selling point, but that’s just me. This guest, however, was using Live View holding the camera far away from her body thus making it unstable, and shooting a straight forward portrait of the wedding couple only 5 feet away. Is this necessary or just plain neglect of a SLR’s capabilities? What’s the point of using a SLR body to take snapshots when it’s much easier and effective with a prosumer point-and-shoot? Relying on Live View just because it’s available will most definitely detract from your patience in framing correctly, noticing the slightest details due to the limits of LCD resolution, and of course prevent you from shooting in direct sunlight. Sooner or later, these photo kiddies will never have any experience of film or know what a view finder is.
Can you guess what aircraft this is?
Not too long after I checked into my hotel, the fire alarm goes off and I stroll out the rear exit and look up and noticed my hotel is on fire…
I rented a Ford Mustang GT for the weekend since I’ve always wanted to test drive a Mustang. It’s one of those American muscle cars I wish to own someday, preferably a Shelby. Even though this GT was only a 300hp V8 with AT, it was still fun and made me smile. The interior was garbage, but that’s not the point of getting a Mustang. I’m glad that didn’t catch on fire either. These photos were taken with my Sony W170. The last shot of this series is definitely my favorite because of the perfect lighting condition with the sunset. The shot wouldn’t have worked any better without the warm brick walls against the fiery red Mustang - and of course, a little tilt adds some dynamics to a still shot.
The following day I invited a gorgeous actress from Toronto to model for me. Of course I had to use my sweet ride as the prop, all the while trying to not make this look like an import model shoot. Obviously, I switched back to my Canon 1D with 24-70mm. The trick here is to drive the car in circles until you get the proper sunlight location. I love it when girls play in the back seat with no pants.
On my third trip back to California, I spent the first half of the week shooting at the beautiful bed & breakfast, Korakia in Palm Springs, about 2 hours from Los Angeles. It was an average of 110F degrees, but it was dry so I didn’t even break a sweat. 4 models in 4 days, I have to admit I haven’t had a disappointing client from the LA area yet, it’s been 100% success rate compared to New York’s 50%. The modeling photos will take some time to edit, but here are the location shots. The follow shots are all taken with the Canon 16-35mm 2.8L II USM.
