weddings – Peter Oshkai photography

December 1, 2014December 2, 2014

Printing photo albums

I have been looking through various options for printing an album for the wedding photo portfolio to showcase my and Armando’s work in that area. While both of us printed photo books before, we wanted to try a top-quality printing company for this project.

These days, there are so many online printing/binding companies that selecting the top one is quite difficult. My personal experience to date has been with the White House Custom Colour (not with books per se, but with gallery wrap prints). The quality was excellent, and one of the canvas prints hangs on our living room wall. I also ordered a couple of books through Apple, directly from iPhoto. I very much liked the result, and the workflow was very intuitive. However, I feel that a wedding portfolio calls for a more substantial binding.

Our top two choices were KISS and The Leather Craftsmen. Both companies came highly recommended by professional photographers in podcast interviews. Both websites have a registration process that involves verification of the user as a professional photographer. After my registration was approved (Yey! An external validation that I am a pro!), I was able to see the price lists. The prices of the albums from both companies are comparable, and they are significant – certainly not what we can afford to just try out by ordering a few different options. That is why it is a difficult choice.

We decided to go with The Leather Craftsmen because of the wider range of available formats. The KISS offers only square format, which is simple, but somewhat limiting for what we want to print. I am looking forward to trying the procedure for preparing the photos and designing the layout of the book and, of course, to seeing the final product.

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014

Building wedding portfolio: staged photoshoot

A staged wedding photoshoot at the historic Empress Hotel in Victoria was one of the major photography projects for me last summer. Armando and I wanted to expand our portfolio beyond sports, so we approached our friends, who work at Lugaro Jewellers and the Empress, as well as colleagues, relatives and local models and makeup artists and proposed this collaborative project.

The shoot involved three photographers (Armando, Ilijc and myself), two male and two female models, and my wife, who was involved in all aspects from brainstorming the shooting list and posing ideas to coordinating the jewelry inventory. The preparations were fairly involved, and literally every aspect required multiple iterations and coordination with many people. We had to find a date that worked for everyone, contact local bridal boutiques to borrow a wedding dress (one of the models had her own dress) and visit the location beforehand to decide on the lighting setup and the shooting list.

The day of the photoshoot was quite intense, as we planned a lot for the eight hours. We shot in two rooms: first in a library, and then in a banquet hall. At each location, we had two lighting setups operating simultaneously, and the models rotated between them, changing the outfits and jewelry in the process. We used Paul C. Buff Einstein E640 studio flashes with various diffusers and umbrellas to modify the light. We shot with Canon DSLRs (1D X and 5D Mark III) and various lenses, from 35mm f/1.4L USM to 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM (the most useful one) to 85mm f1.2L II USM (most spectacular one).

As I look through the images after being focussed on other projects for a few months, I am glad that I had this pause to become a little detached from the whole planning/staging/shooting experience. Looking at the photos with fresh eyes helps me appreciate how much effort everyone involved put into this project and how much I learned from it.

June 22, 2014October 5, 2014

Bling

We started expanding our wedding photography portfolio by taking pictures of rings, graciously provided by Krikor and Marina of Lugaro Jewelry. My original plan was to bring the lights and the diffuser tent to the store, but it became apparent that photographing diamonds requires much more light than could be comfortably accommodated on location.

In fact, at least three lights are needed to capture the brilliant facets of a diamond in colour: a key – highly diffused light, and two additional lights of different intensity. I used an Alien Bees studio flash with a large soft box diffuser, positioned overhead, as the key light, another studio flash without a diffuser on one side and a Canon Speedlite 580EX II on the opposite side. The flashes were optically triggered by another Speedlite (camera-mounted) in a manual mode. Note that E-TTL setting cannot be used on the trigger Speedlite, as it would emit a pre-flash that would cause early triggering of the other lights.

Another point to consider when photographing jewelry or gemstones is textural contrast. Since the objects themselves are highly polished, hard and reflective, using a background that is rough, soft and light-absorbing is a good idea. Of course, rules are made to be broken, so a reflecting background, such as this hand-painted lacquer tray from Kanazawa, can complement the main object nicely.

The biggest challenge, of course, is to come up with an original idea for a photo after seeing hundreds of highly polished, but similar, images in magazine ads. The idea to use a book emerged during the shoot. The book, incidentally is one of the volumes of Pushkin’s letters – a tribute to our heritage and, paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi, a more elegant time.

The most rewarding aspect of this project for me was a chance to do it together with Svetlana, who was involved at all stages. We used to do a lot of photography side-by-side during our travels before Anya was born, but since then, I was doing most of the shooting, and my style, technique and even equipment changed. This time, Anya was in daycare, and we could both focus on the shoot. Perhaps, one day in the future, we will shoot together with Anya?

August 10, 2013August 12, 2013

Wedding photo shoot: pains of image processing

Last Saturday, I was helping Armando as a second shooter on a wedding. It was a really fun gig, and I really enjoyed meeting the couple and the guests. Also, the wedding was at the Deep Cove Chalet in Victoria – quite possibly the best restaurant I know anywhere. The weather was also perfect for photography – slightly overcast with sunny breaks.

I heard an opinion shared by a few very influential pro photographers that shooting weddings builds experience for covering almost any kind of event. All in all, it was a great photo shoot. However, as it is typical for any event coverage, image selection and processing is a phase that can easily take at least as much time as the shoot itself.

This time, in the spirit of making the most of any situation, I am sorting through the images as I am recovering from extraction of my wisdom teeth. The painkiller drugs are a perfect excuse not to do any work that requires concentration, such as writing research papers.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: