marcelo silva

Dj Vicky Vanna

I've arranged a few shoots on Model Mayhem recently and here is another result of responding to a casting call. 

I had the pleasure of meeting an amazing young woman the other day by the name of Vicky. I went on to discover that Vicky is one of the most photogenic people I've ever met. 

Our shoot went well Vicky had a really clear vision of what she wanted to get out of the shoot and that clear vision made my job much easier. The only thing I would say is that maybe as a result of us two teaming up was that we became overly ambitious. Vicky brought a lot of outfits for the shoot and you'll notice all the wardrobe changes in these pictures. Unfortunately we weren't able to use all the items of clothing that she brought.

Vicky and I didn't have a lot in common but by an astonishing coincidence we shared the bilingual bond (as you know it's important a commonality with your subject to build a good rapport, this will translate to a positive mood that will lead to good pictures). When bilinguals who speak the same language meet up it automatically makes them best friends (we're both fluent in English and Spanish).

For this shoot Vicky wanted an edgy/sexy shoot and to be honest I knew I was up for it and here are the results!

Vicky's a Dj check her out her Facebook page here, her Soundcloud and her website.

 

 

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.


  


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.