Clifton Li Photography

Annie Leibovitz is one of the highest-paid photographers and best known for her stunning portraits that have captured the essence of countless notable figures.

Here is one of her behind-the-scene videos that shows her magic by only using minimal amount of artificial lighting:

The photo is built on the light from the Softlighter and the ambient room lamps. Nothing else. Would you have had the nerve to light a Louis Vuitton shoot of Keith Richards using only a sub-$100 brolly box?

And yes, that light is walking itself around intuitively. The post production will always pull much more out of the photo. She always seems to have a celebrity in front of her lens. And then there is the whole gazillion assistants thing.

But the truth is that Annie Leibovitz creates her own weather. She is great with her subjects. She is great at the bedside manner, the broaching of an idea, the tenacity to stick with it and the $$ to do whatever it takes to make the picture inside of her head.

I love her photos, even if they really are giant collaborations.

(© Louis Vuitton / Annie Leibovitz. Click the pic for bigger version.)

Paris Li, www.parisli.net
“One of the newest resident members at the Toronto Fashion Incubator, Paris Li is the founder and designer of PARIS LI, a contemporary women’s wear line inspired by the Asian philosophy of beauty and elegance.”

So therefore, the shoot took place at Toronto Fashion Incubator. It is an innovative and highly respected non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and nurturing small business entrepreneurs. More info can be found here.

This goal of this shoot is to create a lookbook for Paris’ winter 2010 collection. This shoot was done back in Jan 2010. This extremely long delay is not because I am slow at working, the truth is because some of the clothes are participating in a national competition.

The setup of the shoot is quite simple, since it only involves a blown out background. Although it might be simple in a studio setting, I encountered some problems during the shoot. The walls perpendicular to the backdrop is not exactly black, so flare or colored spilled can ruin the day.

Here is the behind the scene video:

Stylist Assistants:
John Medalla
Flora Ghent

Make-up Artist:
Sherlyn Torres

Model:
Blythe Cronyn

Lastly, thank you to my personal assistants:
Helen Wong
Marcus Chan

Derek Cooper is a professional still life and food photographer based in Toronto.
http://portfolio.derekcooper.com

I’ve been working on a lot of shoots with glass lately. Glass is particularly difficult to shoot, especially curved glass surfaces like that of a bottle. It acts as a mirror, seeing everything around it, so it becomes an exercise in controlling light in every detail.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how I shot this bottle of Hennessy Cognac with a glass. This diagram shows an overhead view of the lighting setup – the Hennessy bottle is the circle with the star on it.

I used two light sources mounted behind a very large sheet of white plexi, sand-blasted on the side facing the set. The bottle of Hennessy was sitting on a large piece of oak. I wanted to completely back-light the bottle so the liquid would tend to glow and I wouldn’t show any reflections on the front of the bottle. I knew I was going to use a series of shots to create the final composited image.

The black gobos are used to cut the light coming from the large sheet of plexi – that allowed me to control exactly where the light was going to fall. The gobo behind the set in the frame of the shot was a section of black velvet – it’s still the best at absorbing light.

So, here’s the first shot of the set – for the bottle details, the glass behind it, and the lighting along the left edge of the bottle.

The gobos make sure the thin strip of light down the left side of the bottle doesn’t migrate too far forward. If the left gobo were removed, you’d get a large, wide white strip down the left side of the bottle – resulting from the reflection of the white plexi behind the set.

The gobo to the right of the bottle cuts any light that may be reflecting around the room. Since it’s glass, it’ll see any light in the room that is strong enough. The gobo kills any of that ambient light.

Finally, the gobo beside the camera is cutting the light from hitting the lens. It is blocking the light from the plexi sheet coming from the strobe to the left, and it is also cutting the light from the strobe behind the plexi to the right. If that gobo were not there, I’d get lens flare.

Next step is to light the labels.

That is done in two separate shots – one to light the main labels on the front of the bottle, and a second shot to light the cap.

To do that, I used a sheet of silver florentine and bounced the light back onto the front of the label. Silver florentine is just like a shiny piece of thin cardboard – great for reflecting light.

You have to be patient with positioning the card – you want the light to bounce from above and down, so you don’t get shiny reflections on the label. You also want to make sure the light is bouncing along the labels in the same location, otherwise it would look like the labels were each shot separately.

In the last shot, I placed a large sheet of silver florentine behind the bottle and positioned it so it would reflect the light from the white plexi toward the camera.
This shot will be used to illuminate the liquid in the final composite.

It’s important to fill the entire width of the bottle with light so all the liquid is lit up, being careful not to leave black gaps along either side of the bottle.

It’s also important to make sure the silver florentine card isn’t moved too far forward on the right side of the bottle, otherwise it will reflect on the front of the bottle and ruin the overall shot.

Remember not to adjust any of the settings on the camera – you don’t want to alter the aperture, otherwise it will make compositing the shots later virtually impossible. Keep everything the same from shot to shot, and be careful not to move the bottle.

Once all the pieces are shot and ready, you then composite them together to create one final shot. Here is the result.

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I was invited by Fairchild Radio to photograph the performers of the upcoming Chinese New Year Event, 《四海同聲》春節聯歡晚會 (click to see a Chinese description). The event will be held on Feb 14, 2010 at Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto.

The photographs are to be used by Wilson Chiu for the event poster, and to be published in the Feb. 2010 issue of PLEM magazine.

The performers were asked to do a promotional video at Fairchild TV studio. Unfortunately, I need to do my photoshoot during the video recording. Therefore, continuous lighting (tungsten colour) was my only option. The main disadvantage of this is the low light output. So I used a fairly high iso, moderate shutter speed with a relatively wide aperture.

Here is a quick behind the scene with some preview of the pictures:

Performers are listed but not limited to:
王越 – Sophia Wong, 陳玲俐 – Lily Chang, 姜曉 – Jiang Xiao, 陳琳, 許哲筠 – Claudia Hui, 趙苑晨, 馬艶冰 – Lena Ma, 張輝萍, 鈔藝萍, 楊琳

Personal Assistant:
Helen Wong

Lastly, I would like to thank George, Wilson, and Lisa from Fairchild Radio for giving me this wonderful opportunity!

It was a honour to have the opportunity to photograph the founder and PR director of Distility Branding.

The shoot was extremely successful and went according to the schedule. I basically used 2 Profoto heads and a reflector for the photos. The secret behind the school is to balance the background ambient lights with the strobes. The cloudy day also helped by creating a very even lighting on the interior of the MaRS building.

Here is the Behind the Scene of the day:

CEO: Axle Davids
PR Director: Andrew F Stewart

Distility Branding, www.distility.com
“Formerly known as aXle Branding, Distility Branding is a Toronto-based brand identity, naming and design company with a twist.”, quote from website.

What is so special about this branding company? Axle had spent more than eight years researching and developing a system called 1Day1Brand. It is basically a one-day workflow with no prep work or homework. It was designed to meet the needs for small and medium-sized enterprises. The result of this workshop is the rudimentary foundation of the brand; its promise, pillars, positioning and personality.

Special thanks to my personal assistants:
Helen Wong
Jonathan Hutchinson