TOMMY SHIH PHOTOGRAPHY

Winter was abnormally chilly and wet here in LA this year, with temperatures down in the 40’s up till even last week. We’ve had gale force winds, hail, flash floods, and heck, even a rogue tornado blew through here. So now that the sun’s out, days are getting longer, and daylight savings is over I’m just about ready to start planning for summer. A lot of local designers have long started to shoot their summer or fall look books and catalogs here and I’m about to get in the act as well. While I’m in pre pro on an upcoming shoot it’s nice to look back on previous shoots to see what went right–and learn from what went wrong. Fortunately not too much went wrong here. We just needed to adapt to a changing sun position through our full-day shoot.

The shoot we’ll be looking back at took place on the north shore of Oahu last year. I was asked by Jetset Agency to create new imagery for one of their great models, Calli W (now with Premier). While she had done large campaigns in faraway places including many with her sponsor, Rip Curl, her portfolio was mostly pure cheery and fun lifestyle. They thought she could do more and not be boxed into that genre. I thought to myself–but what I shoot best is lifestyle, why would you want me to shoot something different? So I asked for a reference or inspiration photo to get a better idea of what they were looking for. They sent me this:

Malia Jones by Walter Iooss Jr.

Now I love Walter Iooss Jr’s athlete portraits and was lucky enough to go to an exhibit featuring the work of him and Neil Leifer in LA. But this example provided to me was nothing like my style in terms of how I’d light, compose or really, even style a photograph. At this point I knew I needed to have a conversation about the direction of the shoot with Jetset, because if this is what they wanted, then I would suggest a photographer or two who’s styles would suit. I’m glad I did, because it turns out what primarily drew them to this image was the bikini Malia was wearing! They liked that it was metallic and liked the fashionable details in the piece. What was most important to them was a perception of higher quality in the production value. Great! I explained to them that I felt that getting a great crew together and carefully controlled lighting would get us just that.

The Crew:

We were lucky enough to get the great Pia Sundquist for hair and make up in the morning at her wonderful beachfront apartment before she went off to another job. The type of make up and hair we needed, she could do in her sleep! In fact, you’d be hard pressed to even get a quick nap in because she works so fast. I wanted Calli to look natural, as if she was barely wearing any make up, and to have soft waves in her hair that would catch any trade wind breezes.

Therese Walh was brought on to do the styling for the shoot and she did a great job in pulling together swimwear that had that fashion edge to it that Jetset was looking for. We concentrated on suits with quality fabrics and clean solid shapes that would accentuate Calli’s amazing lines.

Lastly I was lucky enough to get my favorite guy to assist in Hawaii, Elliot Takane to help out on the shoot. It can’t be said enough that a good assistant is what makes a shoot run smoothly. Many photographers, like myself, are extremely scatterbrained and get too caught up in creating photographs to remember things such as where did I put my lens cap/CF card/filter/speedlight/$1700 lens? He knows his photography and also knows how I like to light my images so most of the time I don’t even need to tell him where I need the reflector/beauty dish/soft box/umbrella/all of the above. He’s already standing there ready by the time I look up. Oh and I like taking goofy behind the scenes photos of him when I get the chance.

heh, Iolani

With those pieces in place it was much easier for me to focus on creating imagery that would achieve their goal of higher end fashion-type swimwear photos, while staying true to my own photographic vision. It was time to get started!

I like to shoot natural light whenever I can, and only brought strobes with me as back up. My plan was to shoot this whole thing with just the sun and a reflector. Early on in the shoot, the angle of sun was harsh and really limited our options as I wanted to keep a fairly consistent lighting style throughout the photos. So at that point I decided that I would be back lighting every and using the bounce from a reflector as my key light on all my photos taken while the sun was high in the sky. The good thing about shooting at the beach is the sand works as a reflector to provide a natural fill. You can see here that the sun provides a rim light on her arm and shoulders. Some direct sunlight does spill over to her front, but I never worry about that unless it is a distracting element in the photo.

All photos can be seen here: http://www.tommyshihphoto.com/commercial/stories/calli-w-swimwear/gallery.html

Bikini provided by Vix

Elliot providing fill light with a Westcott silver and gold weave reflector

Even though the focus of the shoot was really on the body and swimwear, I always like to get some beauty shots for the make up artist. This shot was produced in open shade provided by a wall of pine trees. A reflector was brought in mostly to produce the catch light in her eye. It did provide some specular highlights on her lips and chin as well. Again, not too concerned about the light spilling onto her shoulder.

Bikini provided by BCBG

As you can see in this next photo we took a lunch break and it was well past noon so the light wasn’t from quite as high in the sky. Can you guess the lighting set up here? I still felt it would be better to back light Calli at this point though to keep the look consistent. It’s the same setup as the turquoise and brown suit, but the change in sun position means that the rim light is a bit lower. We were also able to catch some of that breeze I was hoping would show up.

We did try to get a few in this suit while sitting on the rocks but there were a few problems. First, the suit bunched up in the stomach area no matter how good Calli’s sitting posture was. Second, this:

I may have forgotten to warn her...oops

Undaunted, in the next look we found a much drier rock and a more cooperative outfit and got the following shot. Throughout this look the sun was going through a bank of clouds so we ended up with very soft lighting. The cloudy sky acts as a humongous softbox and provides a nice look as long as you have enough light to get an exposure. Since it wasn’t that late in the day, that wasn’t a big issue. I lowered my shutter speed one stop and we were ready to go.

Bikini provided by BEBE

These next two are my favorite images from the shoot. Therese was able to come up with beautiful one piece suit with a hood built in to it. The material almost looks like a sheer velvet when it’s dry but also has a metallic quality to it. The first image was a pose Therese had in mind the second she got the swimsuit. It does a great job accentuating Calli’s tiny waist and the silhouette is amazing!

One piece by Gottex

A lot of this shoot was a bit more posed than something I’d typically produce, and that was purposefully done with the client requests in mind. This next image was from the last set of images for the day, and I wanted to make sure that I created the feeling of a captured “moment.” The sun was setting providing a beautiful subtle light and we only had a couple minutes left so I had Calli walk through the tide pool. I asked her to walk away from me and then back towards me. We only got a couple of passes due to the failing light, so I shot quickly and got this.

Therese checks on Calli while Elliot vigilantly maintains his reflecting stance

So that’s it. After that we were out of wardrobe and out of light! While not every image came out perfectly, I feel like the goal of the shoot was accomplished, and the client was very happy with the results. Plus, I was even able to create some photos for my own portfolio! If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we did any of this please feel free to bring it up in the comments. I’d love to share and will elaborate whenever I can. Here’s a nice image to end this post with. All this talk about Hawaii has me looking forward to my next trip back on April 8th. Hope to see you out there!

To see the rest of the photos go here: http://www.tommyshihphoto.com/commercial/stories/calli-w-swimwear/gallery.html