Various Events in Goioere
I have done hat and gown shots of two kids on separate occasions who for one reason or another didn’t make it to the graduation ceremonies having to copy the style of the guy they imported from the next town which was basically umbrella lighting against a backdrop - we had to make do with a wall in both instances and of course only the one brolly as opposed to the two that the pro would have had.
On 9th December there where two events with the school. In the morning they had a sort of sports/fun day at a local centre here which was great. Whilst the teachers where setting things up, the kids took to a slope on the grounds armed only with bits of corrugated cardboard which led to some great action shots. I got right in with my lens at 18mm for some good wide angle stuff. Moving on to the main events there were a few different races between the three teams (there where perhaps 80 kids in total, not a big school) first off was a sack relay followed by a water balloon relay
followed by a treasure hunt looking for paper flowers of different sizes. One team managed to find all three of the big five pointer flowers plus loads of the little one pointers and took the whole thing away from the other teams who had won one of the races each. Last thing was a water slide which got pretty crowded before the head teacher managed to put some discipline into it, I got there before she did which made for some hilarious photos. Unfortunately, I can’t really show any of those on here...That evening the same school did a Christmas presentation for the parents which was nice except that the main part of the evening was done in almost pitch darkness as their flood lights trip the electricity at the moment. As all school asset rich, cash poor so we had to make do with on camera flash, and in fact we both ended up with the pop-up flashes from our cameras. The candle-lit ending came out brilliantly on my 50mm f/1.8 though, so it wasn’t a complete loss! Whilst my wife was suffering in the main area I went scouting to see if I could find anything or anywhere to get a better photo and found Gabriel along with Mary and Joseph waiting in the wings (no pun intended):
Two days later we had our maternity shoot with Jessica, and on Sunday we had a musical recital of the Heitor Villa Lobos Musical Conservatory who where celebrating their 25th anniversary with this recital. Christmas is very definitely on its way as you can see from this first photo:
This Val is who called us to do some photography for the event. She is the second in command of the Conservatory after Ester pictured below:
Ester and one of her ex-students played the closing piece. This student has gone on and studied music through university and came back to Goioere specially for this recital (note the pro guy at the back):
And both of them together:
Sisters Joice and Larissa played beautifully and I really liked the posed shot from after the event when I set up my brolly.
There where many lovely kids who played as well and I really loved the whole thing.
Joice is one of the three girls we will be doing a shoot with tomorrow which will be interesting.
Last night after returning from the ‘Arrival of Father Christmas’ which was fairly naff to be honest with you I noticed the sky was looking pretty cool after we had turned off the lights so using the metal grid on the window, I took some shots of the night which I was pretty impressed with:
I loved the way the light from something going on over that direction spilled across the sky. It surprised me even more by showing up on the photo; normally you need a polarising filter to see rays like this. That would definitely have needed a tripod!
Right... I need to finish picking the photos from the recital to give to Val and Ester hopefully today so until next time o/ Read More...
Maternity Sessions: Jésica
We arrived at her house a little before sunset and although she had just finished work (she still has over a month to go) I wanted to grab the sun which was doing wonders at the front of her house coming through the glass and giving off a lovely glow, so here we go:
I loved the colours on this one, as I mentioned on my last shoot post, having the colours desaturated out of the camera and then manipulating in post is working wonders for me!
After grabbing those, we let her go and get showered and dress up for the rest of the shoot. Whilst waiting for her, my wife pinched some great photos of her husband and son. I loved the candid one of the feet she got:
Her cousin did some makeup for her after her shower which is going to be an important part of our work with Weddings so we pinched plenty of shots of that (more will be in our Portfolio once I get around to updating it):
Some of the walls in their house have some fairly interesting textures, so we tried to make the most of that where possible including the below. I didn’t actually have to add a vignette on this one, the apparent vignetting is actually the flash which after having got some shots using the brolly, I flipped around and took some direct (through the Stofen) shots like the below. I liked the fairly dramatic nature and the specific placement of the light with the flash’s zoom set to 85mm which is the maximum that the SB-600 can manage:
A few more posed shots on the sofa, including some with the baby’s name written on her stomach with lipstick - a little cliché perhaps, but a nice photo nonetheless.
After that, we went back into their front garden and played in the foliage a bit, trying out different placements of the flash to light different parts of the garden and/or individuals. This first one was with the flash handheld off to the right:
In this one the flash was on the floor behind the bench bouncing up onto the foliage and across Jes’ face:
Back inside we finished the shoot and had some food, but I didn’t put the cameras away until we had some final candid shots whilst she was preparing the food, and I loved this close-up of her:
Just before we left her sister who is very good friends with my wife since they studied together came by as she had been doing her evening classes. Again, more oppurtinities for candid shots like this one that really capture the mood of the evening:
Once back in the UK in January I will put these and more in our Portfolio so keep your eyes opened for that.
More shoots to come over the coming days as I try to get around to posting some of the other events we have done plus the stuff we have lined up. Read More...
Life doesn't get much better than this...
You can’t argue with that now can you? I am bronzing nicely as well despite spending very little time in the sun. You can just about make out the V shaped tan on my feet from wearing nothing but flip flops to go anywhere except church... expect that to become more and more obvious as time passes!
We had some beautiful rain here last night and into this morning, everything is nice and fresh and clean now which is great. It needs to rain every so often here else it gets too hot.
In the eleven days since I arrived, we have had six separate photo shoots. Once I get back to the UK and have an internet connection I will need to fork out for the Rapidweaver plug-in Collage 2 I use for our Portfolio which is made by Yourhead Software who also make the very useful blocks plug-in which is what my front page is made with. The trial only allows you four items, which is the number of albums currently held within it. Once the portfolio starts getting big I will also need to split it out by type of shoot, like Maternity shoots, Weddings etc.
I will try to get around to posting our first Maternity shoot on the blog shortly, possibly even today, and see what photos from the other shoots I can safely put on here as well. The Portfolio will have to wait until I get back to the UK in January before I even think about it. Tonight is the arrival of Santa Claus here is Goioere and my wife’s cousins daughter (yeah...) is performing as part of it, but because its a street thing and will be very late, I am not sure if we will take any cameras or anything of any value at all for that matter. On Wednesday we will be doing that modelling shoot I have been talking about which should be great fun. There are now three girls going to be there, and they are all pretty click happy looking at their Orkut pages. It can be quite fun working with people who actually want to be photographed - although it will be interesting to see how much cheesy posing they want to do.
Last night we had a Music Recital for one of the groups of teachers here which was a lot of fun. We where asked to do it by one of the teachers who is giving my wife some Piano tuition whilst she is here. Trouble is, we arrived and saw a guy from the local photo outfit there with his camera, so first question was should we be taking photos or not - I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes. Turned out there was no problem as we are not doing it for money and he was not charging per print but rather a fixed price to hand over the jpegs, so he wasn’t going to loose out. It was interesting watching him work as he does do it for a living if only in the tiny little town here. I was a little surprised at his methods though, he was using a D70s which is no shame, and I couldn’t work out what lens he was using, but it was gold banded (i.e. a pro lens) and stood next to me I only just got the group shot in the frame with my lens at 18mm, so it must have gone fairly wide. He was using an SB-800, but what surprised me was that he used it as direct on camera flash rather than bouncing. For the shots during the recital, whilst I was taking the more formal stuff with my 50mm f/1.8 my wife was using the 55-200 VR with our SB-600 on top, but she was bouncing and in fact even had a Stofen on top for even more diffusion. I would be interested to see how his shots came out as direct flash doesn’t easily come out well. Unfortunately for him, after the music stopped and he was packing away his stuff (he had a fixed list of photos and was being paid only for those so I guess that makes sense) he dropped his SB-800 with a few small pieces of black plastic going off in different directions. This was as I was setting up the brolly to get some posed shots with the various teachers and some of the students by the stage piano. I like the idea of being free to choose my shots, this guy basically took the same photo for each student with little variation. From the photos we will give them, between me doing some of the formal stuff and my wife stealing candids and detail shots with the longer lens we got a wide variety of shots of the performances as well as the audience and the whole event. Nobody mentioned there was a cake though until we saw it half eaten which was a shame, but you can’t be in all places at all times.
Well... that quick update turned out to be a bit longer than I imagined - more photos in the next couple of posts as I finish sorting through these I have here. I am surprised actually... I just looked to see how many photos we have taken between us in December, and it only turns out to be 2750 photos. I had imagined it was more than that, but hey, such is life.
Until next time... take care o/
Living La Vida Loca
After that though, it was plain sailing. Schipol is quite nice, although I didn’t get to see too much of it whilst there unfortunately. On the way back I will have a lot more time for that kind of thing with a longer stop.
Once on the plane to São Paulo however, things just kept getting better. We where in a very nicely done 777, with a brand new interior, a personal entertainment system with pause and all of that so you can start and stop watching films as you please, plus they had several films I hadn’t seen before and actually wanted to see. The food was also great, but the best thing is that the plane can’t have been at more than about 20% capacity!!! So I got three seats by the window all to myself.
In fact, as you can see below, until we got to altitude and the people from the rear compartment moved forward as they filled the plane up from the back, I have the entire row from window to window to myself!!!Follow that with a ‘Leito’ coach which has lie flat seats from Sao Paulo to here and I arrived here nice and rested, although starving having hardly eaten since leaving the plane.
As they where loading our plane in Amsterdam:
Space, space, space.... I wonder if it will be like this on the way back?
Coming up through the clouds over Holland somewhere:
This was as we where following the coast down over Brazil, somewhere not too far north of Rio de Janeiro:
We have been very busy with photography so far here. My wife had a Bridal Shower just before I came out, this being for the wedding (and engagement session) we will be doing at the end of the month as well as a school presentation with the local council here in Brazil. We have also covered two events with a local church school here where my wife’s step-sister works as well as many of ours friends. One was a sort of sports day which took place under a scorching sun, and later that evening a Christmas show for the parents. Both where great fun, although turning all the lights off for the entire Christmas show made our lives very difficult. Thankfully the last bit was candle-lit and that came out great on the photos! Unfortunately, with the number of kids etc there, we won’t be able to post many photos, mostly only of people we are good friends with and can therefore easily get permissions sorted out. That will have to wait a little while...
On top of that, yesterday we had a Maternity Session with a good friend of my wife, Jesica (yes, she only has one ‘s’ in here name) which is what I am working through this morning. I am very happy with these photos, and expect she will be too!
Whilst my wife and I where going through some things a couple of days ago I did manage this cracking shot of her which I figure I have to show you!
Lastly for now, this is just outside Nona’s (Cátia maternal Grandmother where we are staying) front door here: Mangoes
And this bloke came flying into the house yesterday. He might not look like much, but he must have been at least 8” nose to tail! I ended up having to put a bucket over him to take him outside...
Well, that will do for now. I will post again shortly with the maternity session, plus we are going to have that modelling shoot I have been promising before too long as well. We will also be doing a music recital and a graduation, but we won’t be able to post much if anything of those.
Until next time... take care o/ Read More...