Kenya Tay

Parisian model Kenya Tay for a local Atlanta fashion boutique shot in my studio. She's standing on gray seamless. A small strobe flashes through a cutout of leaves casting interesting patterns to frame Kenya as she plays with the dress

Kenya Tay

Fashion is fun, challenging and a great opportunity to play! Kenya suggested a "flying" pose for the jumpsuit. We only did half a dozen takes to get this one. I counted her in to the leap then waited for her to reach the peak of the action before releasing the shutter.

Fashion is a lot of work. After we'd completed photographing the outfits from the boutique, we decided to make some photographs for us. Here, Kenya is sitting, leaning way back bracing herself with her arms on the legs of the stool. I cropped and rotated this photograph to make it look like she is diving. I used the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens.

Jennifer

Jennifer gives the camera an impish grin in this simple portrait for her modeling portfolio. I photographed her against a white seamless using a four by six foot Chimera soft box as the main light. I feathered it so it would wrap around her giving the effect of north light coming in through a window. Two heads light the background. This photograph was made with Sigma's amazing 70-200 f/2.8 OS

I carry a camera practically everywhere I go. I'd just finished a breakfast meeting with a graphic designer at the Carroll Street Cafe in Atlanta's Cabbagetown. Walking out the door I saw this recliner along with a paint bucket end table complete with Marlboros and matches (no ashtray though) resting against the restaurant's wall. I spent about fifteen minutes making the image with the Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 zoom lens

On a walk to City Place in Las Vegas, I spotted the edge of a hotel against the deep blue desert sky. The vertical red sail offset by the horizontal lines at the top called to me. The wisps of clouds at the bottom of the frame suggest this building is as tall as the sky. The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 made the shot. I only take one lens on a walk. I love the way prime focal lengths make me work just a bit harder to make the composition. The results are way worth it.

I hang out of windows, a lot. Especially when they are high up and offer an interesting skyline like this one looking down University Place in New York City. The trees are Washington Square Park where part of the Will Smith movie "I am Legend" was filmed. Ten years ago the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood proudly behind the rust colored NYU library building in the center of the frame.

The A.S. Fales General Store has been a mainstay in Cushing, Maine for a hundred and eighty two years. Depending on which newspaper account you read, I arrived either the day before or the day after John Fales died. His memorial was held in the field behind the store. The flowers at its entry are from that service. The family decided that the store would close forever. John Fales was the sixth generation of proprietors. Artist Andrew Wyeth shopped there.

This view from the Monhegan Island Inn was made during on of fine art photographer John Paul Caponigro's creativity workshops that I was privileged to assist him teach. An hour long boat ride brought the group the twelve nautical miles out from the mainland. The fog had just started to lift when I made this photograph of Adirondack chairs waiting for guests to rise and enjoy their morning coffee.

Longboat at the Monhegan Island lighthouse. I admit right now that I much prefer shooting in the studio with lighting I can control. When I want it misty, I get out the fog machine, thank you very much. That said, it's really important to me to get the heck out of my comfortable place and take up a challenge. The fog was just enough to make the scenes on the island very pastel. The muted colors intensified with a bit of tweaking of the raw file.

Glowing Quartz. Reid State Park, Maine Seeing what you look at is one thing. Recording it with a camera is another. The light just before sunrise is very blue. I chose a color temperature of 5800º to make sure the boulders would be very blue. I painted the quartz rock with an LED daylight balanced flashlight. The question in my mind was is the background water or sky?

Boulders at Ried Stat Park, Maine. The sun had not quite hit the horizon. The light was warmer in color now. The color temperature is still 5800º. Making photographs that early in the morning is a challenge not only because the light constantly changes, it's a lot different than fashion. Composition is everything. Then comes waiting for the light, then making the right exposure. I swear I could hear the spirit of Ansel Adams whispering "Bracket!"

Atlanta’s CW network station ran a contest in conjunction with their hit series “America’s Next Top Model.” The winner would receive preferred status at for the season’s casting call and a full fledged fashion photography session. Constance Benson took both prizes. This photograph shows why. Lighting Constance was a 22” gridded beauty dish, a four by six foot strip light, a two by three medium soft box all by Chimera powered by Dynalite electronic flash. The wonderfully versatile Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom on a Canon 1Ds Mark III body captured this dynamic model

Ashley is a stomach cancer survivor. To celebrate the first anniversary of her victory over the disease, she commissioned me to make a series of figure studies. Her face is lit with a beauty dish and grid, reflectors and a four by six foot Chimera strip box defined her body. The background is a single bare bulb head shining through a board with leaf shaped cut outs. The photograph was made on a Canon 1Ds Mark III and Sigma’s 120-300mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom. It’s unusual to use this long a lens for portraiture and the results speak for themselves.

Several Sigma lenses played major roles in creating this composite photograph of model Arra Castro in the Philippines. She was captured with the 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom. The sunrise and sunset images were made with the 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom on the island of Corregidor while the smoke was captured in my studio with the 105mm f/2.8 macro and a single Dynalite flash head. The composite was assembled using Smart Objects in Photoshop CS5.

I much prefer shooting with electronic flash. This photograph of actors, Tiffany Dupont and Emily Del Guidica in their home in Los Angeles is all natural. The light from an east facing window late in the day fell softly on them. A thirty by forty inch piece of foam core from an art store provides the fill. The key to the shoot was the prototype optically stabalized Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 OS lens allowing me to work at f/5.6 for some depth of field with an 1/8th of a second shutter speed at 70mm.

After Emily left, Tiffany and I moved out to the west facing balcony. Again natural light was the order of the day. This photograph became the ad announcing Sigma’s 70-200mm f/2.8 OS (for optically stabalized) telephoto zoom lens in Rangefinder Magazine. The focal length was 135mm. A 1/60th of a second at f/5.6 was all I needed to make this tack sharp portrait.

Muted sunlight filtering through a break in the trees created this spotlight effect. The light framed her face falling off below her arm. The lightning fast autofocus of the 70-200mm f/2.8 OS made the photograph at 154mm again at 1/60th of a second at f/5.6.

“Blue Ridge Mountains by Moonlight” was made in late afternoon outside of Blue Ridge, Georgia. Three exposures ranging from a 1/50th to an 1/800th at f/10 on a Canon 5D Mark II were combined in Photomatix. The focal length is 40mm.

This view overlooks Blue Ridge Lake with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background on a crisp winter evening in late February. The intense after sunset colors add a golden glow to the ridge lines while the lake compresses into them. This style of scenic requires a long lens. The photograph was captured on a Canon 5D Mark II with the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 set at 300mm made the f/8.0 exposure at a 1/200th of a second.

Award winning colorist and hair stylist to Atlanta’s elite, John Teitter of Bang! Salon created this look for model Heather Donaldson featuring the salon’s trademark violet in the background. Heather’s make up is by Tomas Espinoza. I lit this photograph with a beauty dish on her face and a two by three foot soft box from behind. A single head illuminates the background. My Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 at 110mm captured the exquisite detail of Heather’s red hair. It’s fast, sharp and responsive making this zoom lens a prime tool for fashion portraits like this one.

Pinup photographs are back and thanks to Photoshop along with wonderful wide angle zooms like Sigma’s 24-70mm f/2.8, easily achievable. Model Gabrielle Rivera is lying down with her legs propped up on a light stand. The camera position is over the top of her head. At 24mm the lens stretches Gabrielle’s torso and elongates her legs creating the classic glamour pinup effect. I removed the light stand and background then converted it to black and white adding a warm tone effect to finish it off all in Photoshop.

Breaking rules when photographing fashion is great fun. This one goes against all logic. Atlanta’s picturesque High Museum of Art is the background and Factor model Jessica Cascaes the subject for a fashion shoot at eight millimeters. That’s right the lens is the new ultra wide 8-16mm zoom from Sigma. It’s low distortion, great color rendition and superior sharpness edge to edge even at its widest view allow fabulous full lengths. This is a whole new way of shooting fashion. You simply have to give this lens a go on your cropped sensor DSLR!

Take a beautiful bride, place her in front of a sparkling background then make photographs with Sigma’s brand new 85mm f/1.4 lens at f/2.8 and you have the recipe for ultra sharp portraits featuring buttery smooth almost perfectly round bokeh thanks to its nine bladed aperture. As much as I love zoom lenses, this fixed focal length maintains perspective as I move away or closer to frame the image perfectly. I lit this photograph with a Dynalite ring flash, a beauty dish and strip bank. A single head puts the highlights on the background.

The photograph embodies the game of romance about to be played as Michelle ponders the two timeless questions "He loves me... he loves me not..." While 105mm might be thought of as a somewhat long-ish focal length for a cropped sensor camera like Sigma's SD-14 used to make this portrait, the fast macro lens allowed me to capture all of the sharpness and color without being right on top of the subject.

Bright colorful catalog fashion photography wants to look fun and breezy. Here Heather is photographed with a Sigma SD-14 camera feature Foveon X3F sensor technology and the ultra fast focusing 24-70 f/2.8 zoom lens. This combo is perfect for capturing accurate color even in strong backlight.

Fashion portraits often feature fun accessories like these Kanye West-esque glasses. I have to be able to move in close quickly to capture the model when she peeks over them into the camera. The Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 on a Sigma SD-14 APSc Foveon sensor captures the vibrant colors perfectly!