Five Portrait and Fashion Photography Masters of the 20th Century

December 3rd, 2010 No comments

I recently took a photographic art history course that covered photography from the beginning to 1979. Here are five of my favourite 20th century portrait and fashion photographers. I love surrealism, quirky subjects, striking graphic design, and amazing technical skill. I have picked these photographers because they have created iconic images that continue to delight viewers and inspire us all!

Man Ray  (1890-1976)

Man Ray was an American avant-garde photographer who worked in Paris during the 1920s and 30s. He experimented with techniques such as solarization and photograms and was influenced by, and part of, the surrealist art movement. His work in turn has influenced future generations of photographers.

Le Violin d'Ingres - Man Ray (1924)

Tears - Man Ray (1930-32)

Martin Munkácsi (1896 - 1963)

Martin Munkácsi was one of the first photographers to use movement and action in fashion photography. He photographed many different subjects including photojournalism and sports, and excelled in getting a sense of motion on his photographs. His motto was "Think While You Shoot"!

Lucile Brokaw on the Long Island Beach - Martin Mukasci (1933)

Peignoir in a soft breeze - Martin Munkácsi (1936)

Gallery of Martin Munkácsi images.

Philippe Halsman (1906 - 1979)

Philippe Halsman was a celebrity portrait and fashion photographer. He photographed Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy and many others. His also worked with Salvador Dali and produced the book "Dali's Moustache" in 1954. His technical skill and creative work are amazing!

Philippe Halsman Photos

Vintage Philippe Halsman

Irving Penn (1917 - 2009)

Irving Penn photographed for Vogue magazine in the 1940s and continued doing fashion, portrait and still life for over six decades. His work is visually stunning with a great eye for detail and composition.

Vogue Cover - Irving Penn (1950)

Vogue Cover - Irving Penn (1950)

Irving Penn, A Career in Photography

NY Times slide show

Richard Avedon (1923 - 2004)

Richard Avedon photographed for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and many other magazines, and his portraits were often shot against a plain background with full attention on the subject. His ability to capture mood and emotion through expression and movement was one of his many photographic talents.

Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, France - Richard Avedon (1955)

Natassja Kinski - Richard Avedon (1988)

Fraenkel Gallery

Richard Avedon in the Sixties

There are many more amazing fashion and portrait photographers who I have not mentioned in this post. Who are your favourites? Write a comment!


Peacock Motif Collection by Monica Fraser

November 16th, 2010 4 comments

Peacock Dress

Dress with Vintage Peacock Print Train


Monica Fraser is a graduate of the Vancouver Community College’s (VCC) Fashion Arts program. She was one of the designers at the VCC graduate fashion show that I wrote about in an earlier post. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to photograph her designs in the studio. In this session I photographed three beautiful outfits, each designed around the motif of the peacock.

I was fortunate to be able to work with an awesome model, Charr, and talented makeup artist Tessa Mitz as well.

The first outfit featured a 2.5 meter train made from a vintage print from Vienna over a natural linen dress with a gold silk bolero jacket with pearls and feathers and a golden belt.

Charr

Linen Dress by Monica Fraser

The next https://ellisclinic.com/medical/buy-cipro-online/ dress has a handmade tramadol buy online bird motif print by Monica Fraser. The fabric is white cotton dipped into caustic soda, waxed, then repeatedly dipped into indigo dye. The dress was finished with feathers, Swarovski crystals and a whimsical bird nest!

Charr with Indigo Dress

Indigo Batik Dress

The third outfit was a beautiful vivid blue silk dress made using four different types of silks with shredded silk on the top to look like feathers. It also has a long tail with Swarovski crystals hanging from it. To go with the dress, is a long black hand embroidered coat with a beautiful peacock design made from silk threads in Vietnam.

Vivid Blue Silk Dress

Vivid Blue Silk Dress

Feathered Silk

Feathered Silk Detail

Hand Embroidered Silk Jacket

Hand Embroidered Silk Jacket

Charr

Charr Wearing Coat by Monica Fraser

Congratulations to Monica for a fantastic collection! Thanks also to Charr for modeling the outfits and to Tessa for the beautiful makeup and hair styling.

Women in Leadership 3rd Annual SuperWomen & Friends Gala Dinner

November 9th, 2010 No comments

document.write(" on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/5115385957/">Purple Satin

The makeup for this shoot was inspired by Audrey Hepburn photos from the early 1950's and the hairstyle has a 1940's look.

I used a 5 foot long softbox positioned vertically to light the beautiful satin dress from the camera's right side. To fill in the shadows, I used another softbox on the left that was set about a stop lower intensity than the first https://medimagery.com/online-pharmacy-canada-online/ one.

The background is a grey muslin lit with a a gridded X800 and directed across the background to the accentuate the wrinkles by creating shadows. The strobes were triggered with Cybersyncs. The post-processing was done with Lightroom 3.2 and Photoshop CS4.
document.write(" on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/5115385957/">Purple Satin

The makeup for this shoot was inspired by Audrey Hepburn photos from the early 1950's and the hairstyle has a 1940's look.

I used a 5 foot long softbox positioned vertically to light the beautiful satin dress from the camera's right side. To fill in the shadows, I used another softbox on the left that was set about a stop lower intensity than the first buy klonopin online one.

The background is a grey muslin lit with a a gridded X800 and directed across the background to the accentuate the wrinkles by creating shadows. The strobes were triggered with Cybersyncs. The post-processing was done with Lightroom 3.2 and Photoshop CS4.

The Women in Leadership Foundation (WIL) held its 3rd annual gala dinner on November 6, advice 2010 at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver. The SuperWomen & Friends: Sea of Possibilities event featured silent and live auctions in support of the mentorship program, 3 course dinner, keynote speech by entrepreneur Joyce Groote, a fashion show, and a mini-makeover bar with professional makeup artists and hairstylists.

WIL Founder Maya Kanigan

Keynote Speaker Joyce Groote

The fashion show featured beautiful designs from Wear Else, Invito Couture and the Jacqueline Conair Collection with great work by the models, makeup artists and stylists.

The event was a great success and a lot of fun too!

Click here to see more photos from the event.

Preview: Fashion Shoot with Model Joleen and Makeup Artist Elizabeth McLeod

October 25th, 2010 No comments



Let there be fashion!

The graduates of the Vancouver Community College Fashion Arts Program showed their creations last night at a fantastic show held at Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. The show featured the work of 21 graduating fashion designers, each of whom had 4 pieces in the show. The production was spectacular with great models, makeup, hair styling, music, lighting and of course catering! But the emerging designers were centre stage with some incredible work.

I took as many photos of the outfits as I could! I have previously photographed the designs of one of the graduates, Ana Jost, and I love her work. It was a pleasure to see her graduating and finishing this phase of her fashion design career.

All the designers' work was very impressive and I'm looking forward to seeing more from them in the future, and I hope to use their designs in my photography as well.

You can view all of the outfits in the music video below, or view the photos  here.

Congratulations to all the graduates for your amazing work!

Here's the video on YouTube if you are unable to view the flash https://churchhillnaturalmeats.com/buy-levaquin-online/ version above:

Related links:

Beyond Robson: A Closer Look at VCC's Fashion Arts Students

YouTube: Part 1 of 2 of the Vancouver Community College (VCC) Fiat Mode XXIII 2010 Graduate Students Fashion Show

Straight: Vancouver Community College Fiat Mode XXIII

Music for the video No Return! by Romahichi

Let there be fashion!

The graduates of the Vancouver Community College Fashion Arts Program showed their creations last night at a fantastic show held at Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. The show featured the work of 21 graduating fashion designers, each of whom had 4 pieces in the show. The production was spectacular with great models, makeup, hair styling, music, lighting and of course catering! But the emerging designers were centre stage with some incredible work.

I took as many photos of the outfits as I could! I have previously photographed the designs of one of the graduates, Ana Jost, and I love her work. It was a pleasure to see her graduating and finishing this phase of her fashion design career.

All the designers' work was very impressive and I'm looking forward to seeing more from them in the future, and I hope to use their designs in my photography as well.

You can view all of the outfits in the music video below, or view the photos  here.

Congratulations to all the graduates for your amazing work!

Here's the video on YouTube if you are unable to view the flash version above:

Related links:

Beyond Robson: A Closer Look at VCC's Fashion Arts Students

YouTube: Part 1 of 2 of the Vancouver Community College (VCC) Fiat Mode XXIII 2010 Graduate Students Fashion Show

Straight: Vancouver Community College Fiat Mode XXIII

Music for the video No Return! by Romahichi
I recently wanted to take some photos of some antique glass apothecary jars and used a technique called "bright field lighting". Glass is tricky to shoot because it is both transparent and reflective. If you are not careful, treatment you will lose the definition of the edge of the glass and and unwanted reflections and highlights.

http://www.mazenabusrour.com/?p=103

Let there be fashion!

The graduates of the Vancouver Community College Fashion Arts Program showed their creations last night at a fantastic show held at Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. The show featured the work of 21 graduating fashion designers, each of whom had 4 pieces in the show. The production was spectacular with great models, makeup, hair styling, music, lighting and of course catering! But the emerging designers were centre stage with some incredible work.

I took as many photos of the outfits as I could! I have previously photographed the designs of one of the graduates, Ana Jost, and I love her work. It was a pleasure to see her graduating and finishing this phase of her fashion design career.

All the designers' work was very impressive and I'm looking forward to seeing more from them in the future, and I hope to use their designs in my photography as well.

You can view all of the outfits in the music video below, or view the photos  here.

Congratulations to all the graduates for your amazing work!

Here's the video on YouTube if you are unable to view the flash version above:

Related links:

Beyond Robson: A Closer Look at VCC's Fashion Arts Students

YouTube: Part 1 of 2 of the Vancouver Community College (VCC) Fiat Mode XXIII 2010 Graduate Students Fashion Show

Straight: Vancouver Community College Fiat Mode XXIII

Music for the video No Return! by Romahichi
I recently wanted to take some photos of some antique glass apothecary jars and used a technique called "bright field lighting". Glass is tricky to shoot because it is both transparent and reflective. If you are not careful, treatment you will lose the definition of the edge of the glass and and unwanted reflections and highlights.

http://www.mazenabusrour.com/?p=103

cheap on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/5202003492/">Purple Satin

Here are a couple of photos from a recent fashion shoot with model Joleen and makeup artist/hair stylist Elizabeth McLeod. The makeup was inspired by Audrey Hepburn photos from the early fifties and the hairstyle has a vintage forties look.

More details and photos from this shoot will be posted soon!

abortion on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/5201891860/">Joleen

Fujica STX-1N 35mm SLR camera (1983)

October 19th, 2010 1 comment

Fujica STX-1N Camera

Fujica STX-1N Camera



I learned the basics of photography using the Fujica STX-1N. I got it as a birthday present in 1983. It is a manual focus camera without any automatic exposure modes. It does have TTL metering with an LED display in the viewfinder, so I was able to learn the basics using this camera. The light meter uses the average method to determine the exposure, which means it can be fooled by certain scenes. It is important to adjust the exposure to compensate if necessary. The camera has shutter speeds of 1/2 to 1/700 s, bulb setting, and cable release for long exposures and night photography. It also has a self-timer.

The STX-1N is very similar to the STX-1, https://assaultvictimlawyer.com/buy-cialis/ introduced in 1980, except the STX-1N has LED indicators for the light meter instead of a needle indicator.

One of the things I really liked about the camera was the split prism focusing screen, which made it really easy to focus the camera manually.

In addition to the X-Fujinon 50 mm f/1.9 lens, I have a

Makinon 80-200 mm lens

Makinon 80-200 mm Fuji X-Mount lens

Makinon 80-200mm f/4.0 zoom lens with macro capabilty, which greatly extended the flexbility of the camera. The camera uses Fuji's X-mount lens system.

I used this camera until I bought my first digital camera in 1999. It has travelled with me and taken photos of my family when they were growing up, so I have happy memories of the Fujica STX-1N!

Fujica STX-1N

Fujica STX-1N

Fujica STX-1N

Fujica STX-1N

Fujica STX-1N

Fujica STX-1N - Back View

Tips for Photographing Glass

October 13th, 2010 2 comments

Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - Lara Miller

Eco Fashion Week (EFW) is taking place in Vancouver on Sept 27-30, 2010. It is being held at the Creekside Community Centre, which was part of the Olympic Village during the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver has a goal to become the greenest city by 2020 and EFW will help to educate the fashion industry and fashion-buying public about environmentally friendly best-practices and to promote those business that have good green https://gigglesgobblesandgulps.com/buy-valtrex-500mg/ practices.

A Green Advisory Board helped to evaluate the fashion designers, retailers and manufacturers using the following criteria:

  • Fair/ethical trade
  • Local
  • Custom/tailor made
  • Organic/Natural textiles and materials
  • Recycled/reborn
  • Vintage/second hand
  • Vegan/animal free/cruelty free
  • Eco printing
  • Fabric waste reduction
  • Green marketing
  • Socially responsible
  • Resource efficiency
  • Eco-certification

These practices can also apply to other industries and I will be looking carefully at my photography business to see what I can do to make sure it is green too!

On Sept 28, I attended runway shows featuring the spring/summer 2011 collections by designers emesha, Lara Miller, Eden, Nixxi, Lav and Kush, and Kim Cathers. Here is a quick look at the the collections by emesha and Lara Miller. The rest of the designers have been posted here.

Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - emesha

emesha - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Lara Miller

Lara Miller - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Here's a slideshow with more photos from the show:


Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - Lara Miller

Eco Fashion Week (EFW) is taking place in Vancouver on Sept 27-30, 2010. It is being held at the Creekside Community Centre, which was part of the Olympic Village during the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver has a goal to become the greenest city by 2020 and EFW will help to educate the fashion industry and fashion-buying public about environmentally friendly best-practices and to promote those business that have good green practices.

A Green Advisory Board helped to evaluate the fashion designers, retailers and manufacturers using the following criteria:

  • Fair/ethical trade
  • Local
  • Custom/tailor made
  • Organic/Natural textiles and materials
  • Recycled/reborn
  • Vintage/second hand
  • Vegan/animal free/cruelty free
  • Eco printing
  • Fabric waste reduction
  • Green marketing
  • Socially responsible
  • Resource efficiency
  • Eco-certification

These practices can also apply to other industries and I will be looking carefully at my photography business to see what I can do to make sure it is green too!

On Sept 28, I attended runway shows featuring the spring/summer 2011 collections by designers emesha, Lara Miller, Eden, Nixxi, Lav and Kush, and Kim Cathers. Here is a quick look at the the collections by emesha and Lara Miller. The rest of the designers have been posted here.

Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - emesha

emesha - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Lara Miller

Lara Miller - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Here's a slideshow with more photos from the show:


Eco Fashion Week, unhealthy this site Vancouver, BC, Spring/Summer 2011, www.kimcathers.com
Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - Lara Miller

Eco Fashion Week (EFW) is taking place in Vancouver on Sept 27-30, 2010. It is being held at the Creekside Community Centre, which was part of the Olympic Village during the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver has a goal to become the greenest city by 2020 and EFW will help to educate the fashion industry and fashion-buying public about environmentally friendly best-practices and to promote those business that have good green practices.

A Green Advisory Board helped to evaluate the fashion designers, retailers and manufacturers using the following criteria:

  • Fair/ethical trade
  • Local
  • Custom/tailor made
  • Organic/Natural textiles and materials
  • Recycled/reborn
  • Vintage/second hand
  • Vegan/animal free/cruelty free
  • Eco printing
  • Fabric waste reduction
  • Green marketing
  • Socially responsible
  • Resource efficiency
  • Eco-certification

These practices can also apply to other industries and I will be looking carefully at my photography business to see what I can do to make sure it is green too!

On Sept 28, I attended runway shows featuring the spring/summer 2011 collections by designers emesha, Lara Miller, Eden, Nixxi, Lav and Kush, and Kim Cathers. Here is a quick look at the the collections by emesha and Lara Miller. The rest of the designers have been posted here.

Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver - emesha

emesha - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Lara Miller

Lara Miller - Eco Fashion Week, Vancouver

Here's a slideshow with more photos from the show:


Eco Fashion Week, unhealthy this site Vancouver, BC, Spring/Summer 2011, www.kimcathers.com

approved visit this site on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalamakia/5205649561/">Medicinal Uses of Lime Water

Glass Apothecary Jar

I recently took some photos of antique glass apothecary jars using a technique called "bright field lighting". Glass is tricky to shoot because it is both transparent and reflective. If you are not careful, here you will lose the definition of the edge of the glass and get unwanted reflections and highlights.

In this shot, I used a white background and lit it with a single strobe facing the background and placed it behind and below the glass jar. The jar was on a table covered with white paper and placed on top of a clear piece of glass.  I put black cards on each side of the jar to give more defined edges. I also used a reflector in front of the jar to increase the light on the label. The basic setup is shown in the lighting diagram.

I did some post-processing - changed the image to a sepia tone, using Lightroom and added a vintage photo to the background with Photoshop. I used a levels adjustment layer to increase the brightness of the label.

Lighting Setup for glass

Lighting setup for glass

The next photo shows a basic image of a glass of water with a couple of drops of food coloring, shot using the same technique without the Photoshop work. In this image I adjusted the contrast and removed a few stray water drops using the dust removal tool in Lightroom.

Glass Lighting

Lighting Glass with Bright Field Method

Another way to photograph glass is by using a dark background with highlighted edges such as in the photo of the glass vase below.  The strobe was placed behind a black background, which was placed in front of a larger white background. The strobe was facing towards the white background, so the edges of the vase were lit by the reflected light.

Glass on Black

Glass on Black

It is very helpful to use a tripod to aid in composing the shots and to help tweak the setup. Although I used strobes for these shots, continuous lighting will work too, and a tripod will allow you to use longer shutter speeds with no problem.

A great reference for lighting, including glass is Light - Science & Magic by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua.

Here are some more tips for lighting glass:

Lighting glass
How to photograph transparent and glassy objects – Tutorial
Tips on How to Photograph Glass

Futuristic Fashion

October 6th, 2010 5 comments

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This is the second part of the shoot that I did with Charity, Jennifer Ruth and Celina Prado. In Part 1 we did 2 pop fashion looks.  In Part 2, here's a futuristic fashion theme with black lights, smoke and neon colours!

We used two outfits for this shoot. The first was a black dress with neon pink stripes on the sides (H&M, $39.95), Red Dollhouse boots (Winners, $18) and a rainbow purse (Value Village, $5.99). The second outfit was a white top (H&M, https://www.glenerinpharmacy.com/buy-viagra-online/ .95), Orange https://churchhillnaturalmeats.com/buy-valium-online-diazepam/ knee-high socks (Winners, $2), Harajuku Lovers purse (Winners, $88) and blue Dollhouse heels (Winners, $16). Proof that you can be fashionable on a budget!  Here are some of the photos from the shoot.

It was a lot of fun and as a photographer, I really enjoy using unusual lighting like the black lights and effects like the fog machine!

Futuristic Fashion - Look 1

Futuristic Fashion - Look 1

Futuristic Fashion

Futuristic Fashion - Look 1 - Black Light

Charity - Futuristic Fashion Look 2

Futuristic Fashion - Look 2

Here's the video for iPad, iPhone and iPod:

Pop Art Fashion

October 1st, 2010 No comments

document.write(" 0, 40,0">

Metallic dress - H&M, $39.95, Necklace - Smartset, $12, Bangle - Aldo, $4.95, Dollhouse heels - Winners, $16

Celina Prado is a fashion design student at LaSalle College who worked with me on a fashion shoot, along with makeup artist Jennifer Ruth and model Charity. We did two pop fashion and two futuristic fashion looks. Here are the pop fashion photos.

The first look featured a satin metallic dress with turquoise accessories and blue heels. Click here to see more photos of this look.

For the second look, Charity wore bright pop art colours - a coral tank top and blue tights, with a Jessica Simpson https://medimagery.com/buy-finasteride-propecia-online/ Havana tote.

It was awesome working with this team! I have worked with Jennifer Ruth for several shoots and her work is superb. I have also worked with Charity previously and hope to do so again in the future. This was my first shoot with Celina, but hopefully we will also team up again soon.

My next post will be about the two futuristic fashion looks that we shot the same day. Here's the link for the futuristic fashion sets.

Music: Restart the System - Ejay Ivan Lac

Pop Fashion

Coral Tank Top - H&M $29.95, Blue Capri Tights - Winners $5.99, Bangle - Aldo $2.95, Jessica Simpson Tote - Winners, $160, Apple Bottoms Sneakers - Winners, $49.95

Categories: beauty, Fashion, Photography Tags: , , , ,

Fiat Mode XXIII – VCC Fashion Arts Graduation Show

September 30th, 2010 3 comments



Let there be fashion!

The graduates of the Vancouver Community College Fashion Arts Program showed their creations last night at a fantastic show held at Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. The show featured the work of 21 graduating fashion designers, each of whom had 4 pieces in the show. The production was spectacular with great models, makeup, hair styling, music, lighting and of course catering! But the emerging designers were centre stage with some incredible work.

I took as many photos of the outfits as I could! I have previously photographed the designs of one of the graduates, Ana Jost, and I love her work. It was a pleasure to see her graduating and finishing buy tramadol this phase of her fashion design career.

All the designers' work was very impressive and I'm looking forward to seeing more from them in the future, and I hope to use their designs in my photography as well.

You can view all of the outfits in the music video below, or view the photos  here.

Congratulations to all the graduates for your amazing work!

Here's the video on YouTube if you are unable to view the flash version above:

Related links:

Beyond Robson: A Closer Look at VCC's Fashion Arts Students

YouTube: Part 1 of 2 of the Vancouver Community College (VCC) Fiat Mode XXIII 2010 Graduate Students Fashion Show

Straight: Vancouver Community College Fiat Mode XXIII

Music for the video No Return! by Romahichi

Eco Fashion Week Vancouver 2010 Part 2

September 29th, 2010 1 comment

document.write(" Vancouver - Kim Cathers" src="http://blog.lloydkbarnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Eco-fashion-99.jpg" alt="" width="357" height="500" />

Yesterday I posted some information and photos from the Eco Fashion Week currently running in Vancouver. I attended runway shows featuring the spring/summer https://naturallydaily.com/tramadol-online-100-mg/ 2011 collections by designers emesha, Lara Miller, Eden, Nixxi, Lav and Kush, and Kim Cathers.

Here's an update with more images.

Here are the rest of my photos from the show:

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