Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, commercial, gsp studios
Every once and a while a job comes up that’s a no-brainer to say “yes” to.
Being asked to photograph for Patrón tequila on a yacht in Newport, Rhode Island was one of those times.
Don’t worry, I’m not blowing the lid off anything here. The Society isn’t REALLY secret. In fact, they want you to join. Visit www.patronsocialclub.com to sign up and look around. Maybe next time they come around you’ll be on the yacht too.
The idea is pretty simple. Patrón is trying to open the public’s eyes to the wonderful world of tequila. They’re moving away from the margaritas and on to mixes that are much more unique and flavorful. And much like wine and beer companies, they’re trying to show people how you can pair tequila with food. In this case, we had an elegant five course brunch prepared by an executive chef. Pretty good marketing tool if you ask me.
For example, the drink above is called a “Liquid Sunray” and was prepared by professional mixologist Jerri Banks. It contains two types of Patrón tequila, fresh pineapple, jalapeño, fresh lime juice, seltzer, and a grilled pineapple skewer. And yes, I said jalapeño. Amazing. The sweetness of the pineapple and the hot spice of the pepper really worked well together. It was served with grilled shrimp cocktail and a roasted yellow tomato bloody mary (pictured below).
My job was not just to drink tequila and eat either. I actually had to photograph the event, including all these new cocktails featured by Patrón and all the dishes prepared by Chef Jules Ramos. You may have eaten his food before if you’ve ever been to Eleven Forty-Nine in East Greenwich or Seekonk.
Two of the best menu items in my opinion are featured below: Portuguese bread duck french toast with a blueberry conserve and foie gras mousse. Smoked salmon wrapped scallop benedict with ham hash and homemade hollandaise gravy. Everything was amazing.
Shooting on a moving yacht and having a small studio setup in a 5×5 cabin is quite the challenge. Especially when most of the food and beverage shooting I had to do was pretty run-and-gun. Meaning I didn’t have any time to stylize the shots or premeditate lighting. People came out with trays and I photographed it as they flew by, so I’m hoping it looks as good as it tasted.
Cheers!
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Tech, gsp studios
I wrote about this kind of light in a post about a month ago. It’s hard and it’s edgy.
I have nothing against soft light. Well, I have a little against it. It’s boring.
Anyone who has mastered the basics of blending flash light and ambient light (the sun) can point an umbrella or a softbox at something or someone and make a nice softly lit picture. I’m not saying there’s no creativity involved with soft light, or that it still isn’t a challenge… I just feel like it’s a bit overdone.
There’s definitely a time and a place for soft light… see previous wedding post here.
Weddings are actually a great example… the bride wants to look soft and flattering on her wedding day. High fashion uses this a lot too.
But yesterday, with model Gibran, I went in the other direction. All these images are shot with two Nikon speedlights. One was always on camera left with a snoot aimed towards his face, and another with a tight grid on camera right skimming his lower torso. The backgrounds were underexposed by about 2 stops… all shot right around sunset/dusk in the shade of Providence.
The light is designed to just skim the model. It’s a bit more challenging to carve the ends of a light source into an image, but to me, well worth the refreshingly different look. Normally, direct light (or non-diffused light) like this is very hard… as in the opposite of soft… as in very harsh and unflattering. Think point-and-shoot style portrait in a dark restaurant or bar…
There’s three reasons the light doesn’t look too hard in these pictures. In general, the male face can handle hard lighting a bit better than a female. It’s naturally more edgy in structure, so this style of lighting kind of matches that. But more importantly are the other two reasons… The light sources were always pretty close to the model… closer means bigger means softer. And lastly, because I was for the most part using just the very edges of these light sources.
Think about the way a lamp or flashlight hits the wall… it starts to fade out and feather towards the edges, right? Flashes do that too. When you use the edge of even the hardest light, you can get a relatively soft look… but still hard when compared to that of a softbox or umbrella.
I was also told once that if you want a picture to look interesting, don’t light all of it.
More questions? Hit me in the comments.
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Tech, Wedding, gsp studios
Meredith and Blake got married last week at the Squantum Association in East Providence, RI. They’re a great couple. And this wedding, barring the 95 degree heat, was amazing.
Lots of great opportunities to do some photos outside. And the sunsets at this place are incredible, as you can see above. At the very bottom of the post is the setup shot for the portrait up top and this was the same setup for the vertical images directly above it. That’s my second shooter, Jason. He’s holding a SB-800 with a shoot-thru umbrella on the end of light stand and pointing it at Meredith. There’s also a SB-800 in a small softbox laying on the train tracks and pointed up at Blake.
The small size of the softbox keeps that light from getting too soft or too big, and the lovely bride gets the nice big soft light. But I had Jason hold it almost above her pointed down and away so the light falloff would be where I wanted it and not blow out the bottom of the wedding dress.
Basically, I would not have been able to get these shots without my second photographer / assistant, Jason. So thanks to him, and a heads up to all you potential brides out there. It’s a little extra for a second shooter, but in my opinion totally worth it.
All the photos on the tracks used this setup, even though Meredith was standing for the three final images. She bent down to give her new husband a kiss while I pulled back to get the setup shot… don’t worry, the kiss was captured too!
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, gsp studios
This is Mady. She’s a ballet dancer for Festival Ballet Providence. She wanted some shots done for herself, and I’ve been wanting to work with a ballet dancer for a long time… so it worked out.
We have plans to do some more, possibly some stuff inside the dance studio that shows off a little more movement. These were mostly poses up on pointe, which I can’t imagine what that does to your toes. Stay tuned for more.
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Tech, gsp studios
If you’re a regular reader of this blog you know I do a lot of personal projects. These projects are done for no reason other than to shoot ideas that I have that I like. It’s nice to do some shooting for yourself every once in a while when normally all you do is shoot for other people.
This summer I’ve been working with some great people to create a series of portraits. These are portraits are all taken around dusk and at night.
A few people have probably heard me describe this project in a few different ways.
I came up with the idea based on a lighting concept. All these photos are shot using two hard lights… hard meaning not soft, or diffuse. And the angles of light are very edgy… meaning a lot of times I just skim the subject with a very narrow beam of light.
So what’s that mean to anyone that doesn’t know a whole lot about photography and lighting? Well, light evokes a great deal of emotions in people whether they know it or not, it absolutely affects your mood on a day to day basis. That’s where this portrait project came from. The look and mood of this lighting design reminded me of summer nights. The way people look in dim moonlight, or being skimmed with a small beam of an overhead streetlight.
So there you have it, a project was born. I’ll be working on it all summer and hope to mix in a lot of different people and environments. But for now, here’s a sneak peek with the first three models I’ve worked with. Enjoy.
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Tech, gsp studios
Doing a little portfolio shooting this week. Worked with a few great models, Brendan and Vanessa. Started by shooting a few concepts that have been floating around my head for a while. We shot at Black Point in Narragansett, RI.
We did a lot of glamour/fashion type stuff at first, and then the shoot started trending towards more lifestyle type imagery… But then the models got dirty sitting in that tide pool so they had to wash off in the ocean and it turned into a bit of a glamour shoot again.
For the techies… Flashes were used in all these photos. The shaving shot had soft light on Vanessa (umbrella), and a hard light on Brendan (grid). The martini shot was two hard lights, one frontal and one to the side. All the individual portraits are two hard lights… a snoot coming in from high camera right and a gridded flash from waist level camera left. Oh, and the lifestyle tide pool shots were also one soft frontal and a hard side light to give the images some pop.
Hope you like ‘em!
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Promotion, Wedding, gsp studios
A little over a week ago I had the pleasure of temporarily working for Entertainment Television, better known as E!.
More specifically, one of their subsidiary stations, The Style Network.
More specifically than that, the show “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?”.
You can read about the show, watch clips, and keep up with the summer schedule by clicking here.
They were shooting a show in Rhode Island at the Providence Biltmore Hotel and I was lucky enough to photograph it. It was my first wedding working with a 15 person film crew. It was both awesome and stressful at the same time.
Basically the show selects a couple and usually keeps one or two people in the loop throughout the wedding plans, but in this case, the bride was not one of those people. She had no idea she was getting married until 4 days before when they completely surprised her! I know, sounds crazy, but for all you brides out there, I think you’d get over it when they say “oh and by the way, everything is now free”.
And not just free… totally upgraded. This couple was going to have a $25,000 wedding, but instead they get a $150,000 wedding, an awesome experience, and it’s all captured on film!
I treated the photography for the day like any other wedding, except I had to make sure I wasn’t getting in the way of any important shots for the show, and I had to avoid getting any cameramen or sound guys in my shots… which as you can see from the photo below, was almost impossible for wide angle shots.
But overall an awesome experience. I guess I’ve got style after all. The show will air sometime late this summer. I’ll be getting an exact date from the producer sometime within the next few weeks and I’ll update with another post. Until next time…
Not a great photo, but you can see all three cameramen and a couple of sound guys in this one:
The cake and table settings:
The bride and her flowers:
All the flowers:
The director having a little fun with a stressed out bride:
The lovely couple:
And the couple with their director:
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, commercial, gsp studios
Roba Dolce is a Providence, Rhode Island based company that creates homemade-style authentic Italian gelato and sorbeto. They started with two small gelatorias and received an overwhelming response for their delicious frozen dessert. Meaning “sweet stuff” in Italian, Roba Dolce started packaging their product and selling it to the masses.
Recently they’ve been growing even bigger and are set to release newly designed packaging, brand new flavors, and expand their market nationally. That’s where gsp studios comes in. They hired me to photograph some fruit, some gelato, some packages… and everything edible was most certainly eaten. After it was photographed of course.
I thought I’d share a few photos from the shoot. Above are some editorial-style photos that will probably get slapped with their logo and published in some food magazines around the country. They’re intended to put you a gelato-craving trance.
The ones below are of their new packaging… some new designs, new sizes, etc. So start looking for these in stores starting in the next week or so. These will be used on their website, trade magazines, and internal publications, like the company’s annual report.
Hope I made you hungry. Enjoy!
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Wedding, gsp studios
The lovely couple pictured above and below is Jenna & Bill. They’re getting married this October in Newport. But before that we roamed around Narragansett, Rhode Island on an engagement portrait session.
For those of you unaware of what an engagement portrait session is or why you would ever want/need one, let me educate you:
What it is… a very informal portrait session with an engaged couple and their future wedding photographer, usually in a very picturesque location of the couple’s choosing.
Why you want/need one… not only does it help you get to know your photographer and become a bit more comfortable with them before you’re all thrown into the hectic wedding day, you can also use these photos for newspaper announcements, for “save the date” invitations, even have the photos turned into prints or albums to give as gifts. What’s becoming increasingly popular is having a matted print or photo book with blank pages act as the guest sign-in during the wedding reception. The possibilities are pretty much endless. And if nothing else, in the end, you’ve got some great pictures of yourselves as a couple.
I usually like to have the engagement session in an opposite type of location from where the wedding is going to be… just for some diversity. For example, if you’re getting married by the beach, having the engagement session in the city can give all the images a different look from your future wedding. Some people just love the outdoors, the country, the beach, or the city and like to give their photos some uniformity. To each his own. I just show up and take the pictures! Enjoy.
Posted by gsp studios | Filed under Photography, Tech, gsp studios
What do you get when you combine an amazing sunrise with a fantastic model capable of doing the things you see above and below? Well, you get these images. I feel like I was just pointing and shooting out there… anyone could have made beautiful photos that day.
These images aren’t “for” anything. Just a desire to wake up at 4AM and add a new dimension to my portfolio. So I hope you think it was worth it.
I’ve worked with Monica in the past and we always tend to create some very powerful images together.
All these photos were created with two lights… the sun, and a Nikon SB-800 into a shoot-through umbrella. That’s another reason I like shooting at sunrise, aside from the amazing color, low angle of light, and misty fog in the distance… the sun isn’t too strong yet and you can overpower it with a wimpy little speedlight. Amazing.
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www.gspstudios.com
A one-man Providence based photography and design studio. Specializing in weddings, portraits, lifestyle photography and commercial work of all kinds.
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