Day 5 of My Portrait Challenge Featuring Filipino Handcrafters

Published on May 30, 2018May 30, 2018 by GurezuLeave a comment

Day 5 out of 7 days of Portrait Photography Challenge.

Featuring handcraft artists I met during CameraHaus neighbor event “Bosch Fan Fair” last Saturday where toymakers, wood and metal artists showcased their art. I talked with some artists and they enthusiastically posed with their sample works. I added description and their contact numbers just in case you are interested.
I also want to thank Sir Golden Maranan of Bosch, organizer of the event who introduced to me to other artists and liked my page as well. Thank you Sir!

Title: Filipino Handcrafters
Gear:Fuji-XA3, 35mm f1.4 fujinon
PP: Lightroom presets Sunnysidev2 and Rufosque
Event: Fan Fair sponsored by Bosch, May 26, 2018, BGC, Taguig City

Arvin Angeles. A creator of collectible scratchbuild Voltes V toys. He debuted his public display in ToyCon Manila 2017. He continues to join in different toy conventions and workshop in the country. You can see more of his amazing works in his fb page: ArvinAngeles2000

2. Kenneth Si of Hashikko. He does customized furnitures, decors and sculptural trophies. For orders: Contact 09166088909.

3. Donald Lee of House of Wooden Letters. Established in 2013, House of Wooden letters has provided a great alternative to commercial gifts, home, and office decors, business and office signs and souvenirs.

For those interested: like their fb page: House of the Wooden Letters

Posing with Sir Golden Maranan of Bosch Philippines.

Here’s just random photos from the Fan Fair.

Because of this event, I also come to know about Bosch User Group Philippines. First of all Bosch is a well known brand for providing tools, cordless or corded power tools which artists like them use to create wonderful crafts. These fb group is not only a user group but a hub to share their favorite tools and guidance to those who have questions about them.

I truly appreciate Filipinos that brings the honor of our country though any form of art. I wish to meet more of them personally in the future. How about you? Do you also have this kind of hobby? Please share their social media accounts. I always love to discover new artists.

Day 4 of My Portrait Challenge and Tips on Fashion Photography by Charisma Lico

Published on May 27, 2018May 27, 2018 by Gurezu17 Comments

We are on Day 4 and my model today is a celebrity! Angelina Jolie! She looks super fresh that day she made it look like the break-up with Brad Pitt was million years ago.

Of course I am kidding. But she truly looks like Angelina Jolie perhaps in her younger years. But sometime’s she looks like Scarlet Johansson too. What a lucky lady.

By the way I met her in Camerahaus Photo Festival yesterday. The highlight of he event for me is I got to attend the “Fashion OOTD Photography” seminar by Charisma Lico. And as part of the practice session, they invited Angelina Johansson (I named the model this way for the mean time” to be the student’s subject. To tell you the truth, it was not comfortable to shoot with many photographers. It was like a battle to get up close shots with the model. The shoot looks like this.

I’m not the only girl in the pack but majority are boys. I think in photography world, girls are really outnumbered. By the way I could say I am lucky to be in front as much as I’m persistent too!

She looked like Scarlet Johansson in this one.

Gear: Fuji-XA3, Fujinon 35mm F.1.4 lens
Location: BGC
Model: Angelina Johansson (Joke only. Really don’t know the name)
PP: No preset. Just slight adjustment for exposure, contrast

Since this is a fashion shoot, let’s have a write-up on her style for on that day. Angelina Johansson sported a sleeveless pink cropped-top paired with glimmery green pants.

Her sky-high stilettos might cost a fortune I supposed.

I adore her circular necklace and earrings. I can imagine this whole ensemble is well-suited for a night-out or for hosting an event or party.

Special thanks to Ms. Charisma Lico for sharing her experiences and knowledge about Fashion Photography. I have checked out her instagram and I realized that she was the photographer of almost all magazine covers that I liked recently. I am really inspired. By the way here she is! She’s pretty too!

SOME NOTES FROM HER LECTURE

1. What are the factors to help you conceptualize a Fashion Photography shoot?

She summarized the answer in an acronym DO IT.

D-Desire! You have to answer the following questions first.

a. What do you want?

b. Who is the subject?

c. What is the genre or the desired details of the shoot?

O- Overall Impact! This refers to the mood, treatment, feel or tone of the photo you want to achieve. Do you want it be magical, gothic, vintage?

I-Influences. You can also get concepts from the photographers you admire. It does not necessarily mean you copy them because you’ll never be able to. but you can always get ideas on how they approach a shoot, on what are their workflows, thought processes and so on. And from there, you will be able to create your own.

T-time. You invest time and effort. You keep on shooting, reading and learning. Eventually, concepts and ideas would automatically flow.

2. Fashion Photography comes with a set of team; you as a photographer, art-director,make-up artist, stylist and the model. It is a collaboration of artistic minds

3. In a fashion shoot, the first thing to be considered is the THEME. Eventually, the poses, location, set-design and treatment will follow.

4. Some DIY fashion tip idea. Use a projector. Very portable and it’s a set design by itself. These are the sample from her instagram. I’m pretty sure these are the photos she showed in the lecture as well.

View this post on Instagram

Such a breeze working with, @catriona_gray 👑 on the cover of @previewph Preview.PH this May in @gucci Creative direction @vince_uy and @markbuenaobra Produced and Styled by @itsmarjramos Co-produced by @yannalopez Make up by @robbiepinera Hair by @johnvalle20 Words by @officialowen Photography @charismalico using #SonyA7rii Thank you Preview team💙

A post shared by Charisma Lico – Santos (@charismalico) on May 9, 2018 at 9:52pm PDT

View this post on Instagram

Beautiful @catriona_gray 👑 on the cover of @previewph Preview.PH this May Creative direction @vince_uy and @markbuenaobra Produced and Styled by @itsmarjramos Make up by @robbiepinera Hair by @johnvalle20 Photography @charismalico using #SonyA7rii Thank you Preview team💙

A post shared by Charisma Lico – Santos (@charismalico) on May 7, 2018 at 6:32am PDT

After the shoot with the model, she showed her own output as well.

She uses Sony A7 RII. Settings says she used an ISO 500 because it was quite cloudy at that time, aperture of F 1.4 and Shutter speed of 1/800. She shoots is Raw + JPEG mode. I forgot what lens she used. I’m going to ask her in instagram. I hope she replies haha!

By the way, I won something in this seminar because I asked a question. It’s a cute notebook!

Thanks Sony although I am a Fujifilm user. ;P

Day 3 of My Portrait Challenge and Pointers of a Good Portrait Photography

Published on May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 by Gurezu4 Comments

Yes! For the Day 3, my models are cute children! I captured these photos during our company’s Trick or Treat last year. There are loads of pictures but these are my favorites.
Title: Cute Kids in Costumes
Model: Officemate’s kids
Camera:Fuji-XA3 with Fujinon 56mm F1.2 lens
Edit: Some SOOC, some with minor Lightroom adjustments to correct skin tone.

Special thanks to G2photography Photobooth, Photoman and Photo Coverage for lending me the 56mm F1.2 prime lens. It was easy to isolate the subject from the background using this lens. Truly good for events and portraits. I could not afford this kind of lens so it was a great experience to feel how it feels like to use this.

Cute Hermione

Moana (I think?)

An Angel

I’m not sure …

Princess Sophia?

Baby Shark

Thor

Little Red Riding Hood. I applied a preset on this one. I want to make it slightly dramatic. Like she’s looking for someone, a fox maybe.

And my most favorite kid that day, Chuckie! I picked him because he’s much into his character. He was running around , hiding and taunting passerby for reals. I almost had a heart attack when he surprised me. Just look at his eyes. He’s enjoying being photographed.

So while I’m this challenge, I had some readings more like a review with regards on what it makes a good portraiture photography. I’ll make this notes super super short.

Portrait Photography is capturing an image of a person base on the personality he wanted to convey

These are the signs of a good portraiture photography.

Subject’s confidence in front of the camera. To connect to the subject is the first job of a photographer and is very important. When the subject is at ease in front of the camera and the photography process, he could effectively exude the aura and do all the poses required. This all boils down with photographer’s communication skills. A good photographer could make the most camera shy person to feel confident in front of the camera.
Clarity of the eyes. As the old saying says, it’s the window of the soul. If the eyes is not clear in the portraits, the whole image suffers.
Correct skin tone or in technical terms, the right “White Balance”. Most portrait photography should show skin color as close to the subject’s actual skin color . It could be an exception if there is an unusual theme in mind. If there’s an occasion that skin color can’t be matched, the technique is to make it black and white.

Of course there are other rules but these three are the most usual key points I see in any article. In my experience, number 3 is the hardest one. First, you can’t control the lighting condition in most cases specially if its outdoor or an event. And I also have the weakness to over edit pictures. For some reason, warm skin tones looks pleasing to my eyes. A habit that I am still learning to supress! haha! Anyway I have learned something in lightroom to correct the skin tone. To help you visualize, here’s one of the pic above that I edited.

Unedited. Warm skin color. Kinda yellowish because of the lighting

Edited. Slightly corrected the skin by Lightroom.

Did the picture improved from the previous one? What do you think my dear readers?

If you think so, I’ll say how I corrected this thru Lightroom. ( Actually there’s a bunch of it in youtube.)

Day 2 of My Portrait Challenge

Published on May 24, 2018May 24, 2018 by Gurezu2 Comments

I am posting portraits for 7 days. This is for Day 2.

This set came from one of our activities of in our company photography club to practice portraits with ringlight.

SET 1
Title: Fab and Fun
Model: Jieanne Teodoro
Camera:Fuji-XA3 with Kitlens 16-55mm
Edit: Lightroom

Lighting Director and Co-photog: G2photography Photobooth, Photoman and Photo Coverage

Set 2

Title: Pink and Green Splash
Model: Jieanne Teodoro
Camera:Fuji-XA3 * Kitlens 16-55mm
Edit: No edit (SOOC)
Location: Office

Lighting Director and Co-photog: G2photography Photobooth, Photoman and Photo Coverage

Sharing one Behind the Scene photo…

By the way I’m thinking of Cafe’ portrait series. (A portrait photoshoot inside a cute cafe’)

Do you want to be a model of your favorite cafe in a minimum price (Lol. Maybe just treat me in that cafe’)? Just comment or contact me in my social media!

Day 1 of My Portrait Challenge

Published on May 23, 2018May 23, 2018 by Gurezu17 Comments

I will be posting portraits for 7 days. I’ve been thinking about seriously building up my port-folio. I’m also going back to the basic photo composition to re-motivate myself. There are LOT of decision-making and thinking lately that it exhaust me so I want to refresh. I hope this week-long activity would re-energize my drained spirit. I am seriously low in battery (spiritual,emotional,physical)

Will be posting potraits for 7 days. This is Day 1. My model is none other than my mother! She’s not that hard to convince to do this. She’s so game for this.

Some infos.
Title: Hopeful Mother
Camera:Fuji-XA3 * Fujinon 25mm
Edit: Lightroom preset “Peach Perfect”
Location: Venice Grand Mall

SET 2:Photos edited by Lightroom Rufosque preset

But of course, I won’t let a photoshoot pass by without my own photo. My mom is such a good human tripod. I set the settings then told her where I will position myself so she could focus on that. And that’s it!

That’s all folks!

By the way I’m thinking of Cafe’ portrait series. (A portrait photoshoot inside a cute cafe’)

Do you want to be a model of your favorite cafe in a minimum price (Lol. Maybe just treat me in that cafe’)? Just comment or contact me in my social media!

“Night Fairies” Photoshoot Series

Published on February 8, 2018February 10, 2018 by Gurezu18 Comments

Fairylights became a trend last year because the viral series of photos by Brandon Woelfel. Basically its just like a Christmas light but lighter and safer since it uses LED. So as part of our Infor Photography Club practice, we decided to have night fairies shoot. We did not imitate Brandon Woelfel’s editing style though. We had three models for this photoshoot series. Actually it should be only one session but it became three due to popular demand. My models are my friends and new officemates although they belong in different department. Like before, our photoshoot was just held in our office. And if you are interested to try this,I bought the Fairy Lights online at Copper Lights PH.

Not only I became a photographer but also became a stylist. I conceptualized the dress and props to use. I also lent my own white dress that I rarely use. This is really one of the most fun photoshoot we had last year. And I think my output was great base on the feedbacks I received.

My camera was Fuji XA3 and I just used kitlens (16-50mm) for most of the following pictures. Although sometimes, my mentor let me borrow his prime lens.

Before anything else, this photoshoot series is a collaboration with my Infor Photography Club Mentor Gerard Dangca of @g2photography. My photos would be series of darkness and vagueness if not because of this guidance.

HASMINE

Make-up: @judylovesthis

Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

SOME BEHIND THE SCENE PHOTOS…

By the way, this dress is mine and I bought it in Zalora like a year ago. I didn’t have the chance to wear again. Luckoy me because it was perfect for this shoot.

Outfit For Today: White Lacy Dress from Zalora. #Zalora #WhiteLacyDress #klubkeluarga #ootd #summerdress #outfitoftheday #WhiteDress #Beach #CatchingUpForTheSummer #SummerGetaway

A post shared by Gurezu.com (@gurezu) on Jun 10, 2016 at 7:25am PDT

INNAH

We only had few pictures of fairy lights for this one because we did a light painting session which is more tedious. But that deserves another blog post.

SARAH

For the previous shoots, we used warm fairy light. So for this time, we decided to use the cold type of fairy light. It was harder to work with because the light it emits is so unflattering and too harsh for the skin. On top of that, the location we used to shoot is unavailable and we have to use a very enclosed room. But we still proceeded anyway and took it as a challenge.

But of course, I won’t let this photoshoot series to pass by without having my own photos. Hahahaha! Ako pa ba?!

GUREZU

Photo credits: @g2photography

That’s it for today. I hope you enjoy the photos. How about you, do you want to be my next fairy light model?

Day 10 of 30-Day Blogging Challenge.

OOTD: Student Vibe Outfit

Published on February 2, 2018February 6, 2018 by Gurezu7 Comments

It’s 1:43 am and actually too late for my Day 6 of 30-Day Blogging Challenge. I was so busy. At the moment, I am with my fellow TFIOB bloggers and we are on our way to Batangas for our first climb together. I still have no sleep. But I will carry on and finish a blog no matter what to win my challenge.

Yesterday, we had a photowalk shoot around BGC. This is the first outdoor shoot for our club. So I purposedly dressed up because I also want to have new pictures of myself. To have a new profile pic. To have a new banner for my blog. I have serious reasons.

So for today, I present to you a student vibe get-up. The highlight of this look is the tennis skirt I bought at ig:@bohochic. I love tennis skirts because it is youthful and playful looking. Probably because its like a student uniform. Haha!

Paired up with statement shirt and sneakers, the student vibe is now complete.

My mentor took this photos with a 56mm prime lens. Also today, I decided I’ll buy 35mm prime lens because I really love portraits. My mentor recommended this lens since it fits my budget and can do the sharpness and bokehlicious pics too just like his lens.

Well I think that’s all for today. I need to sneak time for sleep while we are still traveling. I’ll do a full blog about our photoshoot some other time.

Thank you for reading. SEE YOU TOMORROW!!

Photo Credit: Gerard Dangca of g2photography

Our Mini-Photoshoot in the Office with the Theme “Black”

Published on January 27, 2018January 2, 2020 by Gurezu25 Comments

I am officially blogging about my photography journey. Let me vent out some feelings a little bit. I’m actually feeling frustrated and anxious right now. Apart from the feeling that I feel like I’m starting again in blogging world, I haven’t reach a level of confidence that I wanted when it comes to photography. I overthink and at the end, I don’t start and finish anything. I argue myself these past few days. What matters is I love to write and take pictures right? After a lot of self-negotiation, I’m finally throwing any emotional baggage at the moment and decided to blog about our first photoshoot of the year . #WriteAndShoot2018, here we go.

Last year I transferred to another company and eventually joined their photography club. Almost every week, we organize a photoshoot to hone our skills. We do our shoots inside the office since our models are also from the company and we are just borrowing their time. For this year, we are starting our photoshoot series with the theme “BLACK” inspired by the Korean series with the same name. Actually our model proposed this concept herself. And that’s good because I won’t have to overthink on the concept.

Before photoshoot, we prepare what we call a “mood board”. Actually it’s just a collection of pictures from the internet which fits the mood of our theme. It serves as

1. inspiration for the photographers

2 idea for the models to know what kind of expression they would exude for the photoshoots.

Imitation is an effective learning style. So at first we look at these photos to learn how those effects were made. Apart from that, we play a sort of playlist in a background for added atmosphere related to our theme. It also helps our models feel homey and at ease. For this photoshoot, we just played the theme song of the korean series BLACK. To tell you the truth, we got this photoshoot workflow from the free seminars we attended in Camerahaus. Actual photoshoots were really like this. Let’s copy from the experts haha!

(Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

We were five in this session. Or beautiful model, Hasz. Our mentor which is also my manager, Sir Ge. EJ, Dan and yours truly as photography proteges, char!

(Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

Behind the Scenes Photos featuring my behind hehe. (Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

For some reason, this photo looks funny to me. I just can’t look at it without silently laughing bwahahahahahahahaha! (Photo credits: Dan Olarte)

So here are my output for this session. A mix of edited and unedited pics. And some technical notes I could remember.

Would You Trust my Eyes?

Just a short note. My godox flash was set in manual master mode channel 8. It served as a trigger for the honeycomb flash located beside the model.

WARM MEMORIES

Achieving Warm Tone. Just a short note, I set my camera in high Kelvin values for this but for some reason it didn’t work. My mentor Sig Ge set the RGB adding red levels.

“Goodbye Darkness”

There were sorrow and regrets beside you.
But there’s also rest
And a lot of time to reflect
Only with you I can see the light
And I’m seeing it bright now
Before I say my farewell
You must know there’s a joy within you too
Goodbye darkness

And guess what, EJ which is actually a videographer suprised us with a BTS video of our shoot. I was really amazed with his editing skills.

BTS | Hasmine | All about BLACK from straightforwardvideo on Vimeo.

That wraps our first photoshoot session for this year. This also marks day 1 of my 30 days blogging challenge. Yes, I’ll be posting everyday for 30 days! I was inspired by another wordpress blogger boredsensei whom I also met in recent blogger meet-up. She is an English teacher in Japan. As of now, she’s already in her Day 12 already. I love how she chronicles her daily life in Japan because it is very informative. It has been my dream to go to Japan because I was into anime’ before. I even studied basic Japanese. Reading her blog makes me feel I’m getting myself ready for my own visit soon. LAW OF ATTRACTION PLEASE!!!!

Ending my blog with my photos of the session taken by my co-photographers.