Photoshoot Yves

Although most of what I shoot is of the female gender I do love to work with male models, and when I get the chance to shoot a model and theme that really fits my needs for my portfolio I of course jump to the occasion.

When Scott Kelby asked me if I knew some good models for his Amsterdam Seminar in the “Light it, shoot it, retouch it” tour I decided to search for a male model, because to be honest good female models I have plenty but good male models is a lot more difficult, from the responses I got Yves was without a doubt my first choice, part of the deal was that he would also got a shoot with me in our studio and you can imagine that I loved doing that. As a theme we decided to make a mix between boxing and fashion. In this blog post the result from that photoshoot.

For the most I choose a very contrasty light setup, actually all were shot with just one strobe coupled with the deep octa and some with a reflector and grid. Do remember that most of the time it’s best to start with one strobe and often you will find out that you really don’t need much more. Sometimes you can open up the shadows by the addition of a second strobe that is set a few stops lower than the main light source and is just used to open up the shadows. For this purpose I always use the 1.90 Elichrom octa.

I always think an image should tell some kind of story, with the following image I let Yves hit the wall, like he just lost a fight”, the main thing for this is that because he really hits the wall you will notice that the image works better than if we would have just posed Yves. The muscles just look different when something really happens instead of a static pose, this is something that can lift an image just to a slight higher point in the story telling department. Overall I love to add some motion in the images but because there is no motion in this image one would very quickly be tempted to just pose the shot, but try it both ways and you will see the difference very quickly 😀

For the fashion shots I used a setup I just love, the 1.90 octa from Elinchrom used from the side against a middle gray background, the light hitting the background is just enough to lift the luminosity to let the model stand out but not being too obvious.

For the final setup we went back to the boxing theme.
For these images I used the Elinchrom Maxilight with a honeycomb grid. I still have the grid that is not a 100% fit for the Maxilight and it gives a very “funky” reflection on the wall which I love to use sometimes (the new perfect grid is being sold now and on it’s way to me, but I will hold on to this one).

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