Model: Becky Campbell
MUA: Felicia Bromba
Styling and Wardrobe: Veronica Hull – VH Studio Designs

I’ve worked with Veronica on a number of occasions now using her amazing PVC clothing. Her corsets are so well made and are very sexy — they photograph well! Veronica brought three totally green “models” into Abbotsford as she was showing at the Taboo Naughty or Nice show a couple of months ago. So for an entire day we shot in the studio and got some amazing shots.

The girls were fantastic to work with, and we had a blast just joking around and trying new things. Makeup was equally fantastic. Felicia never fails to deliver and her work is always outstanding! She turned Meredith into a pin-up queen with her makeover. Outstanding!

Check out some of the photos from the entire site here.

The lovely Tia and I descended upon Crescent Beach in White Rock, BC with the explicit goal of getting some awesome shots while trashing her old prom dress. While we didn’t really trash it too much, we had fun getting it wet and sandy.

For the shot above, I used an SB25 through shoot-thru umbrella camera left on full power. I really wish I had my Alien Bees and a Vagabond battery pack out there for this (although carrying it up and down the “1001 Steps” to the beach would not have been fun) to fight the sun, but I was still happy with the way it turned out. The majority of the photos were shot with natural light as I was often IN the water as well. I really enjoyed NOT using light again for a change. It was kinda liberating.

Check out Tia’s set to see for yourself.

Last weekend I had a friend coming into town to play a concert and we decided to shoot a few promo pics while they were here. I especially owe my friend Chris (the lead singer of Cottonmouth Jones), since he was my drywaller for my studio last year!

Since they have sort of an eclectic mix of rockabilly, country, rock, metal oh and I dunno… spoons? … I thought it might be cool to shoot at the train bridge here in Mission. My lovely wife Lila helped as my VAL (voice activated lightstand) and I did a simple two light setup for the group shot (key right through a shoot-thru, and bare rim camera left).

Check out their site to see more about them and hear their music. And you can view the whole set of shots on my flickr site.

I’m finally starting to get caught up on the 9 or 10 shoots that I’m behind on editing. I shot like a madman in April while my wife and son were in China. I wanted to keep busy so I wouldn’t miss them too much, but unfortunately now I’m heavily backlogged with editing, and I still want to shoot more! LOL

I met Tia through my good friend Eve. Tia and I hit it off right from the start and took over a month to plan a cool “trash the dress” beach shoot. We decided to have a backup plan of casual/glamour shoot in case of inclement weather, and good thing we did. It was eight degrees and raining in April when we shot, so we ended up with plan B. (I did end up finally shooting the “trash the dress” shoot last week. I’ll post those photos soon..after the other sets I need to edit. LOL)

I was very happy with plan B though and the results came out even better than I expected. Lately I’ve been trying to do my location lighting to look more natural (unless of course I’m doing a creative shoot), and so for this I lit the bedroom from the outside. I put an AB800 with a giant softbox on the patio and aimed it through the glass doors to her bed. I then used an AB400 on lower power through a brolly for fill. I think they turned out pretty cool! Check out the whole set to see for yourself.

A month or two back I was asked to submit a photo to the National Geographic Museum’s Terra Cotta Warrior Exhibit photo contest. Last week I had one of my photos (the one above) featured on their blog! I even had one of my other photos featured on a promotion for the contest as well.

I thought this was pretty cool. And especially since I took these photos back in May 2006 when I was a real n00b!

I finally got off my butt and updated my blog theme. It had been bugging me for a while, and consequently I have not updated my blog because of it. Yes, my picture is the one right beside the word procrastination in the dictionary

Curious what you think of it? I still want to edit the footer and a few other things, but it’s close to where I want it. And in honor of the new blog, I’ll post a photo I uploaded to flickr a while back, but never blogged about. It was a set of photos I did for a promo model team called ICE. I was helping out my brother-in-law, Edward Yee, for the shoot and was shooting some for them as well. Enjoy..and watch for more posts shortly to update the photosets I’ve recently done! Click here for the full set on Flickr.

Thanks for understanding.

Cindy introduced me to Kala, as she works with her. Cindy was gracious enough to bring Kala to help her with her very first shoot. So I guess it wasn’t a big deal to get naked with her for a couple of shots. Who am I to complain!

Kala IV, originally uploaded by Steve Cherrier. Model: Kala - Strobist info: AB800 in Giant Softbox camera left on boom, AB400 camera right with shoot-thru for fill. SB28 camera left-rear for hair/rim. View the whole set of Kala’s shots here.

But even if you are not into photography, you’ve probably seen some of his work. He’s produced many covers and feature layouts in National Geographic. He’s also shot for  Sports Illustrated and many other magazines and clients.

Joe specializes in making big light out of small flashes. To us strobists and wannabe photographers, he’s a god. So when 20 photographers got together for a meetup in Vancouver to share lighting ideas and setups and Joe McNally shows up for a couple of hours to say hello, share some of his work and actually do a setup and shoot one of our models — we were in heaven!

I actually had the opportunity to “assist” him during his setup and it was a pleasure to see how he works and thinks. He really likes to work with light that makes the image look natural — like it came from a light source such as the sun, a lamp, etc. His subject was my good friend and model, Cindy Fay. She was stoked to shoot with him, and he was very kind and gracious to her.  He’s a very down-to-earth, easy-going, humble man who has accomplished so much in his career. He started off his talk saying how he loved that the photography community is so good about sharing ideas, and he is living proof that it’s not just us underlings that subscribe to that theory. Thank you, Joe, for sharing your valuable time with us!

I’m going to see Joe lecture on Tuesday night at the HR MacMillan Planetarium in Vancouver. Going to get my book (The Moment it Clicks) signed as well.

Thanks to indigoWestPhoto for the shot of me with Joe outside Pacifica Studios.