Commercial Photography

During the Fall and Winter seasons lots of people look for hats to keep them warm, dry and looking good! These handsome men were a part of a magazine project I worked on this fall with some other very talented photographers. I will be sending out an update as soon as the magazine is available!

A question to all of my readers... What is your favorite part of Christmas?

I would love to hear all of your stories.

For me it was the first Christmas away from my Mom, I was pregnant and homesick. My spouse went out late on night after an argument, he surprised me when he got home with our first Christmas tree and a ginger bread house kit. It melted my heart and started a new tradition for our little family.

Lately I have had the opportunity to do a lot of food photography, I find that food is a challenge to work with only because you have to work fairly quickly but is very rewarding when you get the shot you were looking for. I would love to start doing some food photography on assignment, so if you, or someone you know has a restaurant that needs some photos, count me in!

Nude photography is not something that I do often, it has more of a retail stigma more than a commercial one. I do however appreciate the beauty of the human form.

When I shot these images they were for an assignment. I really enjoyed working with this incredibly wonderful model she to work with, she was kind and considerate, she was open to suggestions and of course she had a gorgeous body. I would love to do a photo shoot of this kind with a male at some point.

Hip-hop has been around since before the 1980s what started as something pure and real, has turned into something that is barely unrecognizable. Some of the true lovers of hip-hop keep the "golden age" alive by flowing with the fundamental elements or pillars of hip-hop culture. These underground artists have high levels of critical acclaim without producers and mainstream influences to taint there sound. Underground artists are intelligent, intricate, and complex. There lyrics are socially conscious, and their beats are freshly unique.

Before the invention of MP3 players, and digital turn tables, Dj's spun 12 inch vinyl records with the sound ground into the groves. The sound was raw and pure, back then the DJ would put on a show using chirps, tweets and mixing it up, the MC would spit lyrics and the B-boys would break. It was a subculture that if you look carefully is still alive and well today.

Visit Jenn Photo on Youtube to see the behind the scenes video.

This photo is full of goodness, the colors and textures are bright and rich. I can see it being used on a menu or in a health magazine. The main issue I see in these soup photos are the sharp shadows and too much crop, if I were to go back and do the shoot again I would add diffusers to the lights to soften the shadows. Even with the shadows as they are this is still an excellent food shot.

One day I felt like doing something a little different, something to get me noticed. What is better to get you noticed than Dynamite.

So we took a trip to the local dollar store to find some tubes, string, a clock and a trigger (no gun powder though:) At home I painted all the tubes red and ties string to one end. Looks awkward I know!



I found an unlikely suspect and strapped him up. Disturbing isn't it?



When we went out to shoot we had a larger audience than normal, people came out of their apartments, a few cars stopped on the side of the road and there was an uncomfortable amount of people on their cell phones. I was sure the police were going to show up.

We shot this behind our apartment building were there usually is not a lot of activity so we could not decide if people were looking at the lights or the man with explosives strapped to his chest.



Even though it was very cold outside my model was a trouper and let me cover his face and chest with water. The shooting did not take long but we did have a lot of fun.

Here is the final image.

Recently I learned that shooting syncro sunlight can be a challenge for some people who are new to the concept. When I first started to take photos I was using small Vivitar flash units and because I did not have a studio to work in everything I shot was outside in the sun. The concept is very simple and it will quickly become second nature.

Here I will give you some tips on where to start and what to expect when mixing strobe light with daylight.

First you need to determine what your sync speed is (find it in your cameras manual) set your camera to this shutter speed.

Next take a meter reading of only the ambient light. Lets say for example that you are shooting a family outside on a sunny day and it is so bright that it is making them all squint. You move everyone under the shade of a giant tree but where do you meter? If you are looking for an even exposure between the background and the flash you will meter the light that is coming from the sun. Whatever the reading says you will set your camera to that aperture.

So now you have your camera set to lets say f/16 @ 1/250 (as an example), what about the flash? For an even exposure you will need to set the flash to output the same amount of light as the ambient reading, in this example the flash and the ambient read f/16.

Now you should have an even exposure. If you want to be creative you can create a more dark and dramatic background by using a faster shutter speed (keep in mind you are at your sync speed so you will need to adjust accordingly) if you are going for a cleaner high key look you can slow down you shutter speed and allow more background light to seep in.

Here are a few quick and dirty examples I took to illustrate how your shutter speed will effect the background in a photograph.

Start at your cameras sync speed


Let in more light by using a slower shutter speed


Match your flash power to the ambient reading, this will give you an evenly lit photograph.


Here are a few more using the same settings except I have now included a set shot to show you how the flash distance and intensity remain the same.

That little girl is running backwards


A little more light makes it look like a cloudy day


even more light allows us to clearly see the background

The winter blues can get the best of anyone even here in Vancouver.

I have found that with all the work going on in the dark studios at school and coming home in the dark I'm getting a little depressed. Recently we were assigned a "made backgrounds" illustration assignment, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to try and bring on the sun!

The goal for this photo was to create an image of this bronze horse in a paddock walking toward a bright warm sunset. So I set up the scene using a paper fence taped to the back of a frosted piece of Plexiglas. and set a Norman strobe low behind the Plexiglas with a CTO gel overlay. The background was looking OK. So I moved onto the foreground.



On the foreground I would have loved to get some sod or AstroTurf but I had to settle with a green backdrop that was kicking around the studio, I dribbled some pebbles around the horse in-order to make it look like stones in the paddock. To light the horse in the foreground I used a very low powered Norman strobe with a 1/2 CTB gel. Thinking back to it now I don't really think that it needed the gel.



The biggest problem I ran into was the foreground light falling onto the background. To fix this I used a C-stand with a white piece of foam-core as a gobo to block the light falling on the Plexiglas. which helped to even out the exposure. The photo below shows what the set looked like. it did not take more than an hour to set up and shoot but that does not include all the pre-planning.



Here is an example of what the final image will look like once developed, keep in mind that the gobo on the background is not perfect and there is some dirt on the Plexiglas. This shoot was a lot of fun and it made me forget about the rainy cold weather outside for just a little while!

Recently I made the leap from strobist to strobe user. The first thing I noticed when I first tried the strobes was how large the light is. Of course the point to using strobes is to have large manipulable light that is easy to use with large groups of people and to have the ability to light a scene evenly.





My friends and I went out to Queen Elizabeth park to take some photos with the new lights. We did a Beauty and the Beast meet Pinocchio and Tinker bell type theme using a Cyrano mask and a grad dress.

Here are the finished photos with very little post production, check out my website for more photos jennphoto.com

One day I received a call from a woman who was looking for a photographer to recreate a photo made famous by Pamela Anderson. The purpose of the photo is to bring awareness to the treatment of animals that are sent to slaughter. Being a huge animal lover and passionate about the way humans miss treat wild and domestic animals I could not say no!



Although the finished image does not look exactly like the one with Pamela Anderson the point is still the same. Animals and humans are all made out of the same parts and even if the animals will eventually be sent away to become our food, that does not mean that they do not deserve respect and a happy life while they are still on earth!

As a commercial photographer it is nice to be recognized in a publication.

The first time the "same parts" went to press they left out the photo credit, yes I was disappointed but I did not take any action because it was such a small publication that it was not going to get many views anyway.





This time the my image did get a photo credit. Even though it was printed in a free magazine it is still a good feeling to see your picture associated with an article inside a publication.

I want to thank Andrea and Eve for staying in touch and letting me know how my photo is being used.

The article is in the December 2010 issue of Senior living and can be found at your local Pharmasave.

For almost a year now I have been planing a trip to Carnation Washington for the "Chicken Lypse". Now you are probably wondering what the F@#* is a Chicken Lypse... well it is an organized photo shoot with a farm theme. These "mini lypses" are unofficially put on by iStockphoto contributors. The volunteers choose the location hire the models and do all the paperwork. All the photographers have to do is show up take some pictures and eat some yummy food!



At this particular minilypse there were 19 photographers from all over the Pacific Northwest all the way down to Alabama. One of the stations where we were shooting was inside the horse paddock. These were the typical Percheron draft horses you would see on a farm, unfortunately the are not really being used for anything, but they definitely have a good life. Because we were in groups of 5 we all had a turn at shooting and when we were not on the clock we helped each other move lights and coral the horses and models into ideal positions.



The model we where working with for this shoot was young and very comfortable around the large horse. Each time it was a new photographer shooting she would gladly hoist herself up or do a front slide down his side. Ike the horse was incredibly patient. He stood there eating his hay as we busily moved light stands, strobes and diffusers all around him. Only once did he spook when someone dragged a light stand along the ground not thinking.

This year for the first and possibly last time I immersed myself in the world of event photography.

There were a lot of emotions that I went through in the 5 hours I was out shooting let alone the nearly 4000 clicks of the shutter!

First thing in the morning was the mini sun run held around BC place Stadium. We were told we could shoot from any vantage point, except we had no idea where the finish line was going to be until after the race had started.

Luckily it was only a few hundred meters from the main finish line, those poor kids who crossed the line with all the balloons stopped running even thought they were not done their race. They still did well, and they were so cute!



It really was a great way to start a beautiful sunny day in Vancouver. The next item on the agenda was the greatly anticipated 10 K to be held on a course winding it's way through downtown...