Emerald - Behind the Scene

"Emerald" by alexdpx

Of my recent works, the photo above is by far the most popular.  824 views, 22 favorites, 22 comments, and 58th most interesting photo for that day - all flickr statistics.  Without question, this is a hit.  Thanks to all who viewed and gave positive comments.

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Group Portrait - The Beats and Bytes Dancers

To those who do not know, the Beats and Bytes Dancers are celebrities in the Filipino community in Qatar.  They are regular performers to almost every Filipino community event including celebrations, grand opening of restaurants and even major concerts of Filipino singers.  One the dancers, Leah, organized this photoshoot with a specific concept.  She happened to be a good friend of mine.

The concept required that a telephoto lens be used to compress perspective and make each one of them appear pretty much of the same size.  That's something unachievable with the usual wide-angle lens we use where people closer to the lens appear bigger than those who are farther.  Not a problem since I've got a dependable Sigma APO 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM II  - currently my favorite lens for portraiture.  However, I am shooting a big group and that means I will have to shoot from a great distance to fit them all in one frame.  A big venue is now necessary to execute the photoshoot.

Fortunately, Beats and Bytes have got some connections at the American School Doha so they were able to secure the school's gymnasium for a one-hour photoshoot.  I used 2 Speedlights, both with umbrellas and one on each side.  There was sufficient ambient coming in from the windows so instead of using them as main lights, I just used them as supplements - to boost ambient light power and fill-in the shadows.

Me in the center holding the Certificate of Appreciation they awarded me after the photoshoot.

They were all pleased with the results.

Cheers,

alexdpx

How Do You Photograph Rain?

I don't know how many of you have tried photographing rain, rain drops in particular.  But if you have, I'm sure that in your first attempts, you were wondering why it did not appeared in the picture.  And then you thought, maybe you need rain to pour harder so you waited for a heavier downpour and tried one more time - without much luck. 

So why doesn't rain appear in pictures? 

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An All Red Affair

The ability to solve problems on the spot will help you go through difficult photoshoot sets.  At this early stage of this blog it is probably worth mentioning that we did not worked in a fully equipped studio and we only had Canon Speedlite.  We did the photoshoot in a private residence, in a rearranged living room just to get enough plain background wall, and our lighting was nothing but Canon Speedlites with various modifiers.

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Same Place, Different Look

For the second time in just over a week, we did a second photoshoot at the beach in Jumailiyah Ruins - this time with Lizie.  But the weather was not as clear as the previous week - there was a slight haze or perhaps sand storm.  Doha was covered with sand on the same day so what we saw is probably from the same sandstorm but because we were on water, we did not felt dust on our skin.

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