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There’s an unmistakably dramatic flair to the classic black and white headshot. This was photographed in my small home photographic studio here in Durban. I’m planning on offering these kinds of portraits in a package deal as follows:

• 30 minute shoot (headshots only)
• select 5 of the images for final editing in a post-shoot review in studio
• you will leave the session with one x A4 print and five 15×10 prints plus digital copies of all files on your own storage device

Price = R195 (pay with credit card online or in cash)

Saturday morning on the Durban beachfront during the 2010 soccer world Cup.

Recently I was commissioned to photograph the directors of LexisNexis at their Head Office here in Durban for their Corporate Profile. This type of shoot is standard stuff for me, until I get a curve ball at late notice. I was expecting to do head and shoulder type portraits on a white background, so I brought along two SB-800 units and an old background flash that I use with an optical slave to brighten the background to pure white. However, when I arrived at their offices my liaison person from the marketing department said that they wanted full length photos on the white background. Ack! Panic!

Usually when I do portraits on white I simply stand the background flash behind the subject and aim it directly at the background – it doesn’t show in the image so you can stand it on pretty much anything you like. However, full length stuff is a completely different animal because you have to use two background lights and then at least one more for your main subject. You can’t place the back ground light behind the subject, because whatever you stand it on will be seen in the shot, so you have to do it from the sides using either barn doors or large scrims so that you don’t get flash for the background spilling onto your subject or causing serious flare in your lens. One light in a confined space doesn’t illuminate the background evenly, but two lights aimed across at opposite sides does the job nicely. Unfortunately I only had three with me, two of which were needed for the subjects.

What makes a shoot like this even more challenging is that you’re under pressure from the clock. Directors simply don’t have the time to be hanging around on set while you fiddle and faff with lighting set-ups. You need to know what you’re doing and do it fast. On this particular occasion the marketing department at LN was really lucky to have had all the directors in the same place at the same time, so what I decided to do was shoot full length and not light the background. This meant it went a shade of light grey, which is not first prize, but at least it makes it easier for the graphic designers to deep etch the subject and then put them onto a white background.

These were all taken using a 1.5m wide white backdrop, two SB-800 flash units, a Nikon D700 and a Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 EX zoom lens. The room size was about 5m by 2.5m.

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For the remainder of March and April 2010 if you book a shoot with me on a Monday or a Wednesday you will receive a 50% discount off my standard rates!

This applies to all types of photography with the exception of Elite Product Photography and requires that the invoice is settled within 7 days of delivery of the images.

I’m really in my element when I am photographing stage performers, especially musicians. It’s not a type of photography I get to do very often, but a couple of weeks back I was invited by my friend John Chamier to come along to the Upper Deck at uShaka Marine World and watch his band perform ahead of the very talented Rowan Stuart. I’ve kind of been stuck in a creative rut of late, so I thought this would be a good chance for me to “get back on the horse”, so to speak.

I’d never been to the Upper Deck before, so on arrival I was quite impressed to see that it really is nicely geared up for live entertainment. You have a great marquee, stage, view of the city and even of the sharks swimming in their big tank below. The stage is fairly large for a supper theatre venue and I was free to roam in the wings and upfront of the performers. Nice.

I took a whole bunch of shots that evening, using my Nikon D700 together with a few lenses. Most of them were taken with the extra-ordinarily good 70-300mm VR. It’s a small, light-weight lens and on the D700 it shines like a bell! I also took some pictures with the 80-200mm 2.8 and 85mm f/1.4, but I found that my best results came from the VR lens. A lot of this has to do with the VR, which is seriously forgiving of my poor technique when it comes to hand-holding in low light.

These shots were all taken at ISO 12,800 and whilst there is some noise visible when you zoom in at 100% in Photoshop, I really like it.

I was approached by Thabane Ncube and his wife TK from Rebel Monkey to take some product photos of their very cool range of fashion bags, manufactured here in Durban. I did three angles per bag on a plain white background. This was a bit of a challenge because of the shiny nature of the PVC that these bags are made out of, but in the end some reflection is necessary to give the product some “life”, which is what has been achieved here. Keep an eye out for these items in your favourite boutique – they’re very Rock ‘n Roll!

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This past week I photographed some jewellery for a very talented designer, Deepak Damjee. We were quite happy with the results, which are going to be used in some top flight SA magazine adverts.

I was recently approached to take some photographs for the Mineworkers Investment company (MIC) at a land re-distribution project they are sponsoring in Kokstad, KZN.

It was a very interesting shoot that saw me taking some environmental portraits of the key players in the project, namely the Mayor of Kokstad, the Makhoba Clan Chief and some of his people, as well as a few other shots. I’d never been in Kokstad before and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it is a very picturesque part of the world.

Some more corporate portraits for LexisNexis. Click to enlarge.

I haven’t photographed any sports for quite a few years, but decided to take a walk to the N3 on Comrades Day to exercise my new camera, the Nikon D700. With every shot I am amazed at the image quality. The sensor on this camera is just incredible! If I had tried to get some of these backlit shots using my D200 I’d be pounding my head against the wall in Photoshop, but with the D700 it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

The camera is very complex though. There are 444 pages in the manual and if you don’t read up on various things you can become frustrated very easily. The menus are huge and the customisation available is staggering! I can assign so many different functions to various buttons that it almost becomes like an application programming interface.

I am massively grateful to Nikon Corporation for making such a brilliant piece of equipment and to Nikon SA for their support in getting it to me.