Styleme Louey

I had the pleasure of working with stylist and model extraordinaire Stylemelouey, who came up from Seattle to shoot with me, and style a shoot for Peenkay T.We kept it simple and knocked out 4 looks in 2 hrs! Enjoy :D

Elinchrom RangerRX in India

So Iʼm just a little nuts, I decided to leave Canada and make a go at things in one of the craziest places on earth, India.. specifically the wonderfully messed up city of Mumbai. In between getting my bearings in this country, finding an apartment, getting harassed by pimps/drug dealers, and networking, Iʼve made some time to shoot some personal work as well. I left my favorite piece of kit back in Canada; the Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed AS pack, luckily the great folks at Photoquip India and Mehta Enterprises came to my rescue and kindly lent me a pack and head for my work out here.. I honestly canʼt thank these guys enough for their help... I woulda been shelling out a good chunk of chai money on renting gear :)So I just wanted to talk about this gear, why I use it, and how itʼs different than other alternatives available on the market.. hopefully I can avoid fielding a bunch of “why wouldnʼt you just do it with speedlights?” questions. POWER!The Ranger is 1,100Ws of photon goodness, couple that with a 2.8 second recycle time and Iʼm laughing like a group of Japanese girls at a bubble tea joint. I like shooting key shifted (underexposed backgrounds) images, which means Iʼm shooting anywhere from f/16 to f/22. This requires a lot of light, especially when my light source is going through a modifier and is farther away from my subject. Now all this power tends to eat batteries fairly quickly, and while the Ranger batteries are stated as offering 250 full power pops, Iʼm pretty sure the folks at Elinchrom work some voodoo magic on these things to make them last far longer.. Iʼve easily fired off 300 frames and been able to get through half a shoot the next day on one battery.. especially if you begin dialing down the pack, the battery life doubles for every stop you dial down, which means youʼre going to get a lot of shooting in before you need to quickly swap batteries.NOT SO MUCH POWER!The Ranger also kindly dials down to a mere 5.7Ws, so I can also shoot in low light at wider apertures as well. This ensures that I donʼt need to deal with swapping systems from shot to shot and I can work all day with the one unit.. Iʼm already carrying enough stuff around, I donʼt want to also have to bring another light and modifier with me as well. Back to the batteries.. if you dial this baby down, youʼre going to be able to shoot on one battery. all.frikken.day. Again, if youʼre at 100Ws on the ranger thatʼs equivalent to full power on an SB900 zoomed to 200mm. So if youʼre using a speedlight youʼre shooting at full power which is A) murdering batteries B) taking 7 or more seconds to recycle, and C) especially in the case of the SB900, youʼre going to overheat and possibly damage the unit. The Ranger will be near instant recycle, youʼre definitely not stressing the unit and itʼs not going to overheat..speaking of overheating, I put the Ranger in a black backpack and carted it around in 45 degree heat... and the unit just kept on tickinʼ like a timex!

WEIGHT!~The main competition to the Ranger is the Profoto 7B, which is a whopping 27lbs! while the Ranger is 17lbs. This is a huge difference when that puppy is on your back and youʼre hiking a mountain in the heat. The 7B is so heavy that I donʼt even like using it in the studio! Another benefit of the weight is that the Ranger can double as a sandbag for your light stand (I like to just hang the Ranger from my C stand by the shoulder strap). Now I know the Ranger Quadra is light as a feather.. if Elinchrom can pack 1,100Ws into that package Iʼll find a woman and marry her just so I can give them my first born..MODIFIERS!As the internet loves to say “why didnʼt you do A with B instead??” sure, you can overpower the sun with 10 speedlights like Joe McNally.. but you ever try to rig 10 of those into one softbox, or better yet, a beauty dish? Cant.Be.Done. I like the ease of just using one head to get the job done..I fussed around in the past with multiple lights and itʼs not fun (granted, I never had one of those fancy tri-flash brackets) so I just lock in the head and rock and roll.And speaking of modifiers, Iʼm in love. I bought the 100cm Rotalux Deep Octa when I first got here and itʼs just about the best thing ever..next to real Indian chai tea of course :)But really? what more could you ask for? The octa stays attached to the speedring, so you just collapse the unit in 10 seconds when you need to travel. I can then pop it open and add diffusion panels in less than a minute.. The same canʼt be said for the old fashioned rod and speed ring variety, those are a total PITA to deal with. not only is it easy to set up, itʼs light as a feather while still being built tough, Iʼve got a photoflex softbox that seriously weighs three times as much. But itʼs not the weight (or lack thereof) or the speed ring system that Iʼm in love with..itʼs the versatility of this modifier that does it for me. I can pop in just a deflector (which you can only do with an Elinchrom head so ditto with other heads that can be used with Rotalux) and Iʼve got a big ass portable beauty dish. I can go one step further and put in just the internal diffusion, which gives me a soft yet crisp light, this is definitely my favorite way to use the deep octa. Finally, I can pop on the outer diffusion and I now have an extremely soft light that still manages to maintain its character.. I find that some soft sources are soft and ʻflatʼ. All in all, I know the Deep Octa is going to be my go to mod for a long time (Even though Iʼm grabbing the 150cm octabank in a week that guy will mainly be a used in the studio).

PRICE!

Letʼs face it, photography is an expensive craft, so why spend more cash than you need to?So you want a Profoto 7B, a head and a spare battery? Thatʼs gonna cost ya a cool $6,450 before shipping... seriously, a spare battery alone is $1,100. So donʼt even get me started on the newer B4 generator thatʼs just under 8K :)Or you can go and grab this kit for $2,399 before shipping and you get the pack, head, 2 batteries, shoulder strap, reflector, varistar umbrella, sync cable, and hard case. Wow. That leaves you enough cash for a couple of mods and a used car.

So just a final breakdown as to why I use this gear over some other options:Elinchrom Ranger Quadra>> Only 400WsSpeedlights >> Lack of power, longer recycle, modifiers, overheating issues, changing light power while light is up high.Alien Bees >> lack of power, and generally just not a fan of their units.Profoto >> Weight and priceBroncolor >> Are you frikken kidding me????!!!??

Ohh and some pictures :)

 And one of me hauling around the kit! thanks to my trusty assistant Ankur Jadhav for the photo and all the help!!

KIMIKO

I wanted to simplify things and do an easy shoot..no makeup and hair or stylist needed, shoot for about an hour, and use one light.I asked Kimiko, who is a hairstylist at Heartbreaker Salon, to come by.. she brought along Jude (who's an awesome tattoo artist), and some breakfast buns from Save On Meats. Great way to start a shoot by eating breakfast and chatting for a bit! :DExcept for the last 2 shots. I used the Elinchrom 150cm indirect octa and a black/white V-flat for fill, or to add contrast to the image. Gridded head on the other two photos.Kimiko rocked it like a true supermodel, and then her and Jude ran off through Gastown to celebrate Whiskey Wednesday!

Actress Mannu Sandhu at Hycroft Manor

 Back in February I had the great pleasure of photographing the beautiful actress Mannu Sandhu at the amazing Hycroft Manor (Shout out to the one and only Jennifer for the hook up!). Clothing was provided by the talented local designer Malene Grotrian and I had an amazing team of Tiffany Antonio on the styling, MUAH by Angela Dhesi, my trusty assistant Michael Petrachenko, and my homeboy Ray on the assist and BTS duties.While some creatives take a long time to put together (and many more just fall apart) this all came together in a week, which was doubleplusgood because I was gearing up for leaving to India and I really wanted to do one more shoot before I left.Before I show and explain some shots, you can peep a little BTS vid shot by Ray and edited by Mike Swahele at IMCMG media. at the link HERE (sorry wordpress is making it impossible to embed the video to the post).So we pulled off 5 shots during a pretty rushed shoot (time limits on the venue)For this first shot I had an SB800 in a 28" Westcott Apollo boomed from the second floor on a C-Stand, for fill I used the 6' Westcott silver parabolic umbrella directly behind me with a LumoPro LP160 that was gelled with a slight blue (A tactic that I'm going to employ more from now on.. it makes the fill less 'fill' and a bit more natural looking).

The second shot we just had Mannu walk to the bottom of the staircase and I popped the SB800 onto the para, 'zoomed'  the light close to the back of the para and shot away..

For the third shot I used an SB800 and a 3x4 photoflex softbox on the right side of the frame and a white reflector camera left.

The fourth shot was taken in this wonderful green room that I could seriously shoot in all day long.. gorgeous space! simple and quick using the same setup as the last shot but with the softbox camera left and little high and on an angle if I remember correctly.

For me, the final shot (which is as the top of this post) is the money shot as it stopped raining outside and I hauled my favorite piece of kit, The Elinchrom Ranger out for a dramatic shot on the balcony.I took the photoflex softbox, peeled of the outer diffuser and added a silver Elinchrom Deflector to the head. The box was high and to the right about 6 feet from Mannu, I also added a gridded SB800 at full power to camera left to fill in the shadow on her right leg and also give some pop to the right side of the dress. Here's a BTS pic of the scene..

All in all, it was a mega fun day with an amazing group of people... I definitely couldn't have pulled this off without all your help!~AA~