photography

Sophie Brandt Cortius

Hey everyone!

I found Sophie on Model Mayhem and proposed a shoot in the city of Melbourne and she accepted.

Sophie's new to modelling, it's something she's wanted to do for a while now so instead of thinking about it she made a model mayhem account to get the ball rolling.

It's important to have a clear idea of what you want out of your model and to pre visualise your shoots or else you'll both have no idea what to do.

It's also important to have a good rapport with your model. Sophie had a european accent so I ask her where she was from, as it turns out she was Dutch, she then asked me about my background so I told her I was born in Santiago Chile, Sophie responds in Spanish and tells me that she went to university in Santiago! As of this moment we began to get on very well.

I also thought I'd throw in a portrait on a Dutch angle for the sake of Sophie's home land.

Head Shots With Alex Cherman

Hey everyone Marcelo Silva here and I just wanted to share my thoughts on the art of the head shot.

I shot with a young talented Australian actor Alex Cherman. Alex has done some modelling before so working with him was a delight because of how professional he was. 

One of the things that I need from my models when doing a head shot is that the tip of their eye lids need to be touching the tip of their irises (this is a softer version of the squint).

One of the other things you need to do when taking head shots is that you want to be shooting at their eye level.

In head shots the most vital thing for casting agents look for is the eyes of the actor (the eyes are the window to the soul). It is vial that the photographer not only nails focus on the eyes but the photographer also needs to go into Lightroom or Photoshop to really make the eyes pop.

I had a lot of fun shooting with Alex check out his Instagram here and his IMDB.

 

Lady Deadpool (Cosplay photography)

Hey everyone! I had a shot with Alana Eve cosplay and I just wanted to reflect on the experience with you guys. 

Check out Alanas cosplay page here. 

The location of the shoot was in a rooftop car park in the Melbourne CBD. This location allowed for a series of different types of backgrounds from the skyline background to a brick wall to a fence and so on a so fourth. 

How did I find a participant for this shoot? I almost always attend every pop culture expo. One day I took a picture of someone cosplaying as Krieger's virtual girlfriend and at the next convention I took a picture of someone cosplaying as Lady Deadpool it turns out it was the same young lady, a few words where exchanged but nothing note worthy. I sent her a message close to the release of the Deadpool movie saying that I wanted to do this shoot and she was kind enough to agree. If this had failed I would have gone to a cosplay community and ask around for a Deadpool cosplayer there.

My pre visualisation for the shoot involved reading all the Deadpool comics ever made! (And by reading I mean looking at the pictures).

And here are the results.

 

 

And don't forget to check out the Vlog.


  


Iron Lady (Cosplay Photography)

As you all know I'm really into cosplay photography so today's blog post will feature miss Alice Shortcake (check out her Facebook page here).

Today I shot with miss Alice Shortcake (a Melbourne based cosplayer). I saw her Ironman cosplay a few months ago and I was quite impressed, I just knew I was going to be able to go nuts in photoshop.

This shoot required a lot of research on my end. I wound up reading every Ironman comic ever made (by read I mean looked at the pictures) for inspiration of what poses. When we got together I brought an Ipad that had all the pictures I saved as research so that I could get the right poses out of Alice.

I was please with how this shoot came out, Alice and I have a good rapport and she gave me all the time I needed to get every shot I wanted. We had a lot of fun. I was also please with the locations around Melbourne we chose (we shot around docklands and the CBD).

Marcelo Silva.

Canon 24mm STM

I recently purchased this lens because it's cheap and I don't own any Canon STM lenses and the technology behind them has always fascinated me so I got the 24mm F/2.8 STM. Another reason this lens intrigued me was it's form factor (it's a pancake lens). I also like to shoot with primes so this lens and I where meant to be.

Canon 24mm f/2.8 STM

The silent stepper motor was something that I just needed to test out the second I got my hands on it. I'm happy to report it works well. You absolutely cannot hear it focussing in live view mode (it's great for filming). One of the down sides of this lens is that it's not the best at focusing, don't get me wrong it's it's good but it doesn't compare to the better lenses.

One of the reasons I wanted this lens is because my now ex girlfriend had an olympus OMD-EM-10 with a 17mm prime lens at the time and I was dead jealous about how easy her gear was to carry! I'm happy to report that this pancake has filled that whole in my life. This lens has become one of those lenses that I always have in my bag because it's so convenient to carry.

One of the things I don't like about this lens is that it vignettes like crazy so this lens isn't going to work well for those who don't edit their pictures. Like most wide angles this lens also suffers from distortion but it won't be a big issue for me as I shoot raw and process all my pictures.

Push come to shove I love this lens I've taken lots good pictures with this lens it's a great every day lens to carry on you.


Students of Swinburne

One day in class I was showing I was showing my friend Nadir some of my pictures from my flickr account and he liked my pictures from my 100 strangers project and he as a less experienced photographer expressed an interest in improving his own photography. One day we spoke about doing a Humans of New York styled page for our University to teach him more about how to use his camera, how to compose portraits and how to approach people.

Not long after we created the page and went for a walk about campus to find people to shoot. To be honest I wasn't prepared happened later that night (but more on that later). We found several willing participants to photograph and  the project was on it's way to be a success. Nadir was learning too, he even wound up getting a pictures that I was jealous of.

I was expecting that only our friends would have liked the page and that we'd have about 20 likes all up but on the first night we got over a hundred and by the end of the week it was over a thousand. It was quite amazing and we where receiving amazing feedback and when we where shooting on campus people where recognising the fact that we where the Students of Swinburne photographers it was an amazing time for the two of us to be on campus at the time. 

I think this page was the reason this page was so successful is because of the community of students felt like they where a part of something special. There's an online community of Swinburne students call Swinburne Stalker Space and an active member of the group wound up posting about our page and that's when it took off.

Unfortunately the stories coming from Australian uni students weren't as deep as some of the stories from the Humans of New york page but the stories we where getting but that's what made our project unique there was some humour involved.

I graduated shorty after and Nadir kept on shooting to keep the page alive and I'd drop by to join if I when I could but then the time came for him to graduate and then came along a young lady by the name of Lois messaged the page to express he interest of joining and now she runs the page.

Check out the page and give it a like just click here.