Retroessence: With Models Mark Ryder, Brian Francis Paul Stewart, Anne Kloosterhof and Alexandra

Being the height of winter stuck within what potentially could have been a wind tunnel would not have been any models cup of tea. Unless! You are these guys! Sitting down for makeup by two of the PortraitX artists Gabriela Heath and Phil Tran shoved onto a very cold metal fridge that was obviously abandoned by some youths who spray the walls there, it seemed as though there really is nothing that could put these models off.

We had set up with the male models Brian and Mark first while the girls were getting their makeup done. With the helping hand of photographer Hannah Davis we set up some lighting techniques that really brought a whole new feel to my photography style. Personally I am now thinking to invest in outdoor light equipment. After doing natural light for so long you get used to doing whatever you please without the problems involved of carting around the big equipment. Unfortunetly though there comes a time when you must step you're game and my time came when I saw just how beautiful images can be when you do certain set up's.

All of these particular shots were created with fill light to light up the subject and then a backlighting without umbrella with blue or red filter to give the effects that you see in the images. The flaring in the images is just from allowing the light to seap into the image from the left or right hand corner of the lens. It usually creates a soft thin line of light that radiates throughout the image and creates a coloured light leak. These were hardly edited apart from enhancement on colour, toning or made into black and white, nothing was added.

Moving swiftly onto the female models for the day we ended up going back to natural light for the first sets as seen below.

Once Hannah was finished with her lighting and was preparing herself for some smoke bomb action in some images. I snapped some more shots with the ladies with use of the lighting along with paired images of a couple of models. Some of these are the best of my portfolio to date.

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