Monthly Archive for: ‘August, 2012’
One crazy graduation
As some of you may know, I had the privilege of being flown out to Seattle recently to cover a very important day for one of my fans. Ngoc Tran (www.sashimi-images.com) spontaneously struck up a conversation with me and asked me how much it would cost to have me come up to Seattle to shoot her graduation, give her some tips/tricks to improve her shooting/editing and take one mind-blowing, dynamic, unique graduation family photograph.
One thing led to another and before I knew it I was on a plane!
How the concept came about:
Ngoc told me she wanted something mindblowing. Something different. Something fun. Something awesome! But she couldn’t quite put to words what type of image she was actually looking for so it took a little bit of fishing in the initial stages to find the right concept. I asked her about her relationship with her parents, her relationship with her girlfriends, how many friends were going to be appearing in the image and what she wanted happening.
I proposed to have movement in the photograph, because that to me adds a dynamic component to a static image so cue the champagne & confetti! The flying dog was going to be the cherry on top though we weren’t quite sure how we were going to have the dog fly so we found a location where he would be comfortable jumping around.
The preliminary sketch looked something like this:
Limitations and considerations
Straight from the beginning we knew that we’d be slightly constrained by the amount of equipment available. Since we only had speed-lights to light a full group of people we knew that we’d need to push the shoot as late as possible to knock down the sunlight a few stops. Thankfully, Seattle is a cloudy city so we were able to squeeze out just enough power from our bare speedlights.
We had three speedlights available to do the shot, which was lit by simply placing two speedlights on either side of the group @ 45 degrees and a third one in the back of Ngoc to add a little bit of rim lighting. The lights stayed static throughout the shoot to make compositing the moving elements back into the photograph easier.
The result?
Thank you ngoc for an awesome week in Seattle 
BTS – What lurks beneath
A couple weeks back, I let leak on my Facebook fan page as well as Instagram (@vonwong) that I was going to be doing a crazy photoshoot involving an indoor swimming pool, black lights, a Kessler Crane Pocket Jib as well as an Ikan Monitor… and this is the result!
Just a small note before u guys all run off to check out the BTS video featured on my Youtube Channel… that this is actually the first full length BTS video I’ve attempted to do myself so any feedback you’ve got on the actual video montage aspect of things, please leave a comment below and let me know how I did! I’ve kinda decided that I wanted to teach myself video editing as the worlds of photo and video are getting closer and closer together…
Anyways I’ll stop babbling now and let you guys enjoy the BTS Video:
This was a very challenging photoshoot for us to actually perform and I’m actually quite happy that we managed to make everything happen! We had a whole deal of problems that we actually had to solve from the get go… but as I like to put it: Sounds impossible, Let’s do it.
How the concept came about:
The initial concept came through when I was sitting at a coffee shop with fellow makeup artist Jessica Spoor where we were brainstorming how to come up with something unique that involved photography and bodypaint. Somewhere along the way, the idea to merge blacklights
For those that are curious, these are what the preliminary sketches kinda looked like.
So… you wanted to suspend a camera over the water?
Yep! That’s right! We really wanted to be able to suspend our camera directly over the water to get that unique 90 degree perspective. The only logical solution to that use a small portable pocket jib. We were working in extremely tight conditions so after shopping around on the internet for the best solid yet compact design we stumbled upon the Kessler Crane Pocket Jib. It would give us over 7 feet of height at full extension, was solid, and affordable. It also happens to be quite portable and easy to setup which was a great bonus! Thanks to some awesome tutorials online by a fellow called Preston Kanak I learned how to setup and operate the thing in a record 6 minutes. That being said… definitely need some more practice on it before I’d call myself competent!
Why the monitor? Why not a laptop?
Well we needed to find a way to be able to see what the camera was seeing and although a tethered laptop could have definitely solved our problems for photo, we actually also wanted to be able to shoot video and the only other option was to have a monitor combined with a trigger. I noticed the IKAN monitors while visiting Vistek ProFusion 2012 over in Toronto a couple months back and was quite impressed with the build quality so I asked them if they’d be so kind as to ship me one of their more recent models for me to play around with. They sent me the IKAN D5 as well as an impressive ultra-high capacity battery and 6″ articulating arm. As I mentioned in the video, the one function I found particularly useful was peaking which lower end monitors don’t offer!
Where does one find an indoors swimming pool?
Finding an indoor swimming pool is quite a challenge. Finding an indoor swimming pool that will allow you to set up thousands of dollars of gear, throw bodypainted models into the water, and swim around for an entire day is even more rare. I initially began hunting for a swimming pool discretely by sending out a couple private messages here and there to people I knew that lived in condos and apartments that had a swimming pool. Unfortunately, I realized quite quickly that there was no way in **** that I was going to be able to convince anyone to let me contaminate their swimming pool so I began pleading to my fans for a solution. Despite the 11,000 followers on facebook, nothing really hit so I started browsing through profiles of friends that had actually shot underwater in the past and that’s when I stumbled in on my first Model Crapuleuse Damoiselle and her photographer Denis Bussiere. Not only did he have an indoor swimming pool, he was more than happy to allow us to play in it for the time required! Not only was he enthusiastic about it, he communicated extremely well throughout the entire prep process and served as an amazing reference for shooting underwater. He’s started a small business over here in Montreal and comes up with some pretty interesting stuff with the props that he has such as mermaid tails and pirates… check out more of his stuff here: http://www.modelmayhem.com/1961453
Wait, why an indoor swimming pool?
For any of you who have played with blacklights in the past, you’ll notice that having ambient light bleeding in can really kill the super cool glowy effect of a blacklight so having a totally dark room was an absolute necessity. Initially, I was planning on covering all the windows with simple garbage bags but my dad reminded me that I had a bunch of random vapor barrier aluminum foil that I had used on a previous shoot that would cover up the windows even more efficiently!
OK so tell me about the blacklights!
About two years back, I had been asked by a light performer by the name of Philipe Blanchet if I’d be interested in taking some photos of him for his business cards. He actually happens to work for a fancy lighting company by the name of Fusion Lumiere and they were more than happy to sponsor us some blacklights in exchange for the rights to use the photos on their website. The last shoot that we did together, things were a lot more simple since we were shooting on the surface but then we were even trying to blend blacklights, flashes and lightpainting together!! It was ridiculously challenging! If you guys are curious, I’ve uploaded the old BTS video onto my channel too for you guys to check out!! Here’s the link:
For those of you who are thinking: But I have no contacts who have blacklights?! Well, they only cost about 20$ on amazon.com or if you’re really just wanting to rent them, check out any special effects stage companies out there. There are a bunch of video lighting companies that will own blacklights that you can rent out quite easily!
Hm, and how did you do the makeup? It’s super cool!
Well, unfortunately Jessica, the original makeup artist with whom I had initially began the concept with ended up getting herself a paid shoot two weeks before our shoot date so I had to hunt down a replacement makeup artist. Thankfully, Philipe Blanchet also happened to have an extremely talented girlfriend by the name of Jacynthe Tremblay who also happens to be a SFX Makeup Artist! We did a bunch of tests earlier on and decided that we wanted to play with some really cool scaly type patterns on our models so she came up with the idea of using one of those awesome plastic fruit wraps to airbrush on (kinda like these but in harder plastic) and a combination of awesome talent, airbrush and brushstrokes did the job!
Oh speaking of makeup, why were you getting painted too?
ahhhh… well the idea was to glow in the dark also while getting shot in the Behind the Scenes so since my good friend Alliebee Henna had come to assist, we thought it’d be fun to experiment with a simple bionic arm design (kinda like in my highlighter video!)… but unfortunately we learned the hard way that not all paint glows properly in the dark… so I remained sadly just as dark as everyone else.
Note to self: Test Paint in Black Light first! (and so should you!)
Back on subject. How’d you make those awesome medusa tentacles of death?
Actually my stylist for the shoot Manuelle Lessard designed the awesome tentacles in a ridiculously short time! We scavenged a bunch of white cloth through facebook friends and others to come up with the cloth necessary to make the arm and waist bands for our photoshoot. You can actually see the pieces of cloth slowly unthreading as the shoot went on… Turns out it’s actually quite hard to swim in those rags!! Not only did she help design the dresses, she also came up with a brilliant solution to thread ribbons into the hair of our models! They definitely didn’t look the most sexy with the lights on…but with the lights off, all the magic happened!
What about that fancy D4 you came up with? Why the D4?
Well, quite simply the Nikon D4 is the best performing low light camera there is out there. It can actually shoot up to a mind-blowing 204,800 ISO where the footage looks quite crappy but still… that’s absolutely insane! I think that the photos that we achieved here would have been completely impossible if we had any other camera system. When I asked NPS to send me a D4 they were unfortunately all booked out but thankfully, once again, through the power of facebook and my amazing fans, Michael had the kindness to offer me his D4 a mere two days before the photoshoot. So a HUGE thank you to Michael for lending me his D4. He’s been using it to shoot a bunch of his concert work so take the time to head over to his website and check out what he does: http://www.thoriumphoto.com/
Alright dude, that’s an insane setup. How’d you gather all the people to come help out?
I suppose one thing just led to another. I really needed a mindblowingly awesome rigger to help me setup the blacklights and a very good buddy of mine by the name of Guillaume Briand was extremely gracious to provide me with a whole bunch of amazing solutions to make this shoot possible. I needed some video coverage so I invited Eric Sanchez who helped me shoot my last “Indestructible hard drive” video review, and long time assistant Nadia Zheng to come help out. For models, I found them through facebook and I contacted Esthel for her unique look to come model as well as Mich for his godly 6-pack. And for additional assistants I had Nancy Patry, Kaleena Jay and Jerome Labrecque who did an amazing job helping out. And finally Jo Gorsky on scuba whom you may have seen in the past as the model I lit on fire, as well as Monique Guilbault who was on set to help cover some BTS photography! So in general… a bunch of photographers who all dropped in to help out and hang out for an amazing day.
Check out some of the BTS coverage:
That looks great dude, now show me those photos!!
Alright guys… here it is! I really hope you enjoyed the photos… and if you did, please share this post with your friends! If you have any questions, leave a comment anywhere and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
Before showing you the images, I just wanted to once again thank ALL OF THOSE who participated in this project… without whom these shots just wouldn’t be possible so… check out what they do, they’re awesome.
Credits:
- AD/Video/Photo – Ben Von Wong
- Makeup – Jacynthe Sauvageau
- Hair/Styling – Manuelle Lessard
- Art Assist – Alliebee Henna
- Rigger – Guillaume Briand
- Grip Assist – Nancy Patry
- First Camera – Eric Sanchez
- Second Camera – Nadia Zheng
- BTS Photo – Monique Guilbault
- Scuba Safety – Jo Gorsky
- Assist – Jerome Labrecque
- Assist – Kaleena Jay
- Model – Mich Todorovic
- Model – Crapuleuse Damoiselle
- Model – Esthel Racine
- Pocket Jib sponsored by Kessler Crane
- D5 Monitor sponsored by IKAN
- Blacklights sponsored by Fusion Lumiere
- Nikon D4 sponsored by Thorium Photography
- Pixel Pawn Triggers sponsored by Lovinpix.com
- Swimming Pool sponsored by Denis Bussiere Photographe
How to make your own product display
Hey guys, posting this weeks video from all the way over in Seattle! Fellow fan Ngoc Tran flew me over to shoot her graduation so let me know if you want to grab a drink or coffee through my fan page and we’ll try to get in touch
This week I wanted to present to you guys a slightly different video. For those of you who have been following me closely, you’ll know that I’ve been playing more and more in creating my own videos from time to time. Naturally, this means that I’ve been starting to pay more and more attention to the video toys available! While waltzing around Toronto during one of my spontaneous roadtrips, I visited Henry’s Canada and saw that they had a nifty three wheeled device on display! This nifty device happened to be the Cinema Skater
That’s when a little bell went off in my head. I contacted the nice folks over at Kamerar and asked if they would be so kind as to send me a unit for me to review and a couple weeks later I had my own nifty Cinema Skater
First impressions were that the Cinema Skater was beautifully packaged in a compact stylish box. After playing with it for a couple seconds, I noticed that it was very solidly constructed (easily supported my 150 pounds of Chinese spinning around on top of it!) and that it was very well balanced. The screws holding the wheels were also very easy to tighten to ensure that their orientation doesn’t change once you’ve taken the time to set them properly. My only complaint was that the notches to help you set your angle seemed to be a little haphazardly placed. They didn’t necessarily match up from wheel to wheel making it a little tough to configure the CineSkater to rotate on itself…
But no worries, a ruler and some patience quickly solved that!
Once I was certain I could configure the Cinema Skater properly, I invited a buddy Elie Babin to help me experiment with the Cinema Skater. Check out some of the results of gear that was lying around! (screengrabs)
- ft. Pico Dolly Kit
and a Smoke Machine
Darth Vader Lego Alarm Clock
Ikan D5 monitor and some Fake Snow
My first dSLR, a Pentax K100D and some bubbles
So what else was required?
for that critical smooth rotation
to lift the product above the wheels (preferably full, or half full to keep the weight down)Excited? Check out the video to see how it was all done!! Hope you guys enjoy this
Disclaimer: The affiliate links in this post help support this website and myself
How to shoot professional ballerinas on the streets of the National Slovak Theater
BTS by Erwan Cloarec
As part of our Von Wong does Europe tour we were given the privilege to work with Ana Beschia and a group of dancers of the National Slovak Theatre. We were given full creative liberty for this photoshoot so Ana and I set about planning for the photoshoot through a series of skype calls and facebook messages.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a random ballerina in a public location can make for some amazing imagery such as those created by the ballerina project. That being said though, I’ve always been more of an epic-large scale shooter so I wanted to challenge myself to create something similar… with more dancers.
While planning this photoshoot with Ana, we wanted to keep the looks very simple and classical for the outdoor half of our photoshoot. Guys in leggings, girls in tutus with slight variations but still in the very recognizable white elegance of a ballerina. By keeping a classic look in a historically rich environment, we were certain that we could come up with some striking imagery.
The day of our photoshoot, we were presented with a gorgeous cloudy sky. This was great news for us since the dancers were all in radiant white clothing and direct sunlight would have made our life quite complicated. The cloudy skies meant that we would not be needing to overpower the sun so we left our Linkstar studio strobes & Innovatronix battery packs in the car and decided to travel with nothing more than a four way flash bracket, speedlights, Undfned fany pack and Sirui Tripod.
We met up bright and early around 9 AM at a coffee shop in the main square of Bratislava, which we converted into a temporary home base for hair, makeup and clothing. While the dancers were arriving, waking up and getting ready, Ana and I did a quick scouting of the surrounding area and planned out the first two shots that we wanted to achieve. The first, to have the dancers climb on top of a statue of Napolean.
For this shot, I had my camera mounted on my Sirui Tripod with a 70-200mm lens. For those of you who are curious, the reason I used a longer lens was to compress my perspective as much as possible to make the dancers look like they were on a similar plane. I used the marble of a fountain located in the centre of the square to add an odd reflection on the lower left corner of the image and shot the images in bracketing mode to compensate for the movement of the clouds.
On the second shot, we used the foursquare flash bracket to add a little bit of light to fill in the shadows since our dancers were slightly hidden in the shadows. This shot was mildly more challenging as people kept constantly passing through! Thankfully though, the dancers were able to quickly reset and adapt between shots.
From there, we found an old rustic street that was extremely cute. Since this street had a distinct european traditional flavor to it, we thought that it would be interesting to add a little splash of contemporary colour to the surrounding area so we proceeded to get the dancers changed up and hopping on the streets. Since I knew that it would be highly improbable to be able to capture all dancers in the perfect moment as my motion capture skills are nowhere near as amazing as those of Lois Greenfield , I threw down my tripod and locked down my focus so that if necessary, I could cut and paste the perfect position of each dancer from a variety of images. Once again, tourists were a constant struggle (see video!) but despite it all… we still managed to pull off our shot.
We then walked to the side of the Danube river and placed our gorgeous dancers on the ledge. After taking a couple shots with only the dancers, we realized that the shot could be enhanced just a little bit if we could throw in a cute couple to sit on the bench facing the dancers so we captured an old pair of tourist and invited them to participate in our photograph! The result? This photograph was actually shot 3 stops underexposed to make sure that we had a beautiful sky and soft even lighting… and then recovered in lightroom.
Finally, we had the dancers do some crazy acrobatics with a lamp post despite the protests of a public security officer. Although he did attempt to stop us a couple times, we pretended not to understand and simply forged ahead. He wasn’t very intimidating in his tricycle!
Special thanks to those who helped us make this shoot possible:
- Official Sponsor: http://www.SLRLounge.com
- Gear Sponsor: http://www.Lovinpix.com
Partners:
- Sylights.com
- The Workshop Factory
-
Special Gear used:
- SIRUI T-2205X
with a K20x provided to us by Lovinpix.com - Undfind waist shooter
- Nikon 70-200 VR I
-
- Video: Erwan Cloarec Visuals
- Assistant: Alistair Stewart
- Dancers: Ana Beschia, Alice White, Alexandra Walton, Bethan Smith, Martin Anderson, Dominik Slavkovský
The hidden talents of a highlighter
As part of my research on making things look glowingly magical in an upcoming music video I’m being asked to direct, I was told that highlighters have the hidden ability to glow in the dark when graced with the presence of a blacklight
. Curious to test things out (and also happening to have a blacklight
hidden in one of my closets) I invited Alliebee Henna to come over and doodle all over my body with a highlighter and see what we could create.
This pattern took a surprisingly long 4 hours to create (with a couple fails in between) and a total of 3 highlighter
These shots were taken at ISO 1600, f2.8 and 1/60th of a second so if you do attempt this on your own, be sure to try and bring the light as close as possible because these things don’t put out very much light!
Hopefully this inspires you guys to try things out on you
PS. Do not open highlighter with knife. It can be dangerous 
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