A Revisit to “You must have a good camera!”

I know I’ve said it before, what not to say to a photographer “You must have a good camera!” There is some truth to that statement! In my opinion, the actual camera body, Canon, Nikon, Sony Fuji… doesn’t make a difference. If you put anyone of those brands in the hands of a good photographer, they’ll capture a great image! The lens of choice is the determining factor in how an image is captured. Let me elaborate on that, different focal lengths have varying looks to the final RAW image. A super wide lens 10mm to 20mm would not be my first choice if photographing a portrait, especially if it involves a tight headshot. These focal lengths bring distortion to any subject when shot at a relatively close distance. It has a distinctive look to it if used for the purpose of adding distortion to a portrait. It can bring objects that is closer to the lens, giving it a distorted view of being larger than life. 

12mm (full frame)f/2.8

The more traditional focal lengths for portraiture are 50mm, 85mm, 105mm, and, my favorite, 135mm. I normally carry a 35 mm with me in my bag for more of an environmental portrait shot that will include the couple's surroundings as well as the couple. Or if I’m in a tight space where I don’t have much room to back up, I’ll use the 35mm. I don’t care so much for anything widered such as a 24mm for environmental portraits, 35m is my comfort zone.

23mm f/2 (35mm full frame equivalent)

The second lens in my bag that I’ll gravitate to is my 85mm. This lens adds compression, which will bring the background close and help to fill the frame. At a wide aperture, f/2, my go-to aperture, it blurs out the background to make the subject pop off the screen! However, the 85mm lens that I have opens up to f/1.2, which can be too much blur or bokeh but can work for a great image at f/1.2. The only downside to this focal length is that my clients can’t hear me over the crashing waves & sounds of the ocean.

56mm f1.8 (85mm full frame equivalent)

Lastly, the third lens that’s always in my bag is a good old 50mm. I use this lens when I need to interact with my clients and if I have a limited amount of space to back up. The 50 is a tried-and-true portrait lens; in fact, I can do an entire photo session with only a 50mm on my camera. The 50 can capture amazing tight as well as wide shots, making it a very versatile lens.

50mm f/1.2 (full frame)

I recently added an 18mm super wide-angle lens to my bag, mainly for that distorted look that makes a long dress look even longer and bigger. That lens is a Rokinon 12mm (18mm full-frame equivalent). It fits in the palm of my hand and weighs almost nothing. The distortion can be minimized if used properly. This lens will come out for a few “different” looks, then back into the bag. It serves its purpose!

12mm (18mm full frame equivalent)

To recap, in my humble opinion, it’s the combination of the camera, lens, and photographer that creates a style in a photograph. To some extent, it is true that “you have a good camera” is actually a compliment, but I’d rather hear my clients say you're a good photographer rather than you have a good camera! Make sense??? Lol!

A work in progress...
Learn, grow...repeat!

JENN'S MATERNITY PHOTO SHOOT...01.22.2023

Funny thing, I did a previous photo shoot with Jenn on 8/28/22 of last year. It was a creative photo shoot, but little did she know that she was hapai (pregnant)!?! I found out a few weeks later when I sent her the final edits from that photo shoot. I’ve never done a maternity shoot before but ask if she was game for me to try & she said yes!

I wanted to wait until she was showing & we waited to do the shoot in her 2nd trimester in January. I also needed her husband, Edric, to be part of this photoshoot. With my assistant Brandon, we went over to their home & I set up my portable WESCOTT X DROP PRO backdrop, love this, it’s so easy to set up & portable that I can take it anywhere. It took us about 5 minutes to have it up & ready to go. A word of warning, the Wescott X Drop Pro is for indoor use only. You can use it outdoors, but if the wind catches it, it’ll become a huge sail! Very basic 2-light setup 42” umbrella as my key & a 24” octa as a rim. I would LOVE to use my 42” & 65” umbrellas more often when shooting my environmental portraiture, but outdoors the wind in Hawaii is always an issue! The light coming out of these is so soft & beautiful, it literally takes my breath away! I’ve come to love using my Flashpoint/Godox AD100 Pro lights on all my creative shoots. I have 4 of them & have stopped bringing my AD200 & AD300 Pro strobes to location shoots unless it’s in the afternoon.

Jenn is a pro at modeling with her facial expressions & posing, which makes things so much easier for the photo shoot to flow smoothly. Even with all of her experience as a model, I always create a mood board as a reference for posing & as well as lighting. I do this will all of my creative shoots & creating a mood board can make or break a shoot. I’ll also send the mood board to the model to give her an idea of the type of vibe I’m looking for.

Jenn & Edric are a beautiful couple, I enjoyed the shoot & made some amazing images! I can’t wait until Part II of their maternity shoot!!!

A work in progress...
Learn, grow...repeat!

For inquiries & pricing about setting up your home maternity photo shoot, contact me.

OUT OF THE DARKNESS...01.30.2023

Click on the link to see the full gallery of images from this photo shoot…Aloha

Personal photography project with clay.

From the first day I met Crissy, something about her stuck with me. I’ve come to realize that it was her beautiful, caring soul. She’s the kind of person that even though we don’t see each other for months, we can pick up like we just saw each other yesterday! She has a very rough exterior, but once you get past that & really get to know her, she has a heart of gold!!! Even when she’s stressed, she’s always thinking about others & putting her concerns behind her to help out her friends. She is an inspiration to me! 

For this project, I was inspired by another photographer & his partner to attempt to do this shoot with dried, cracked clay, @kimhenry.dance & @ericparephoto. The images hit me on an emotional level! I knew exactly who that person I wanted to be as my subject, so I approached Crissy & explained my concept to her & she was happy to indulge my vision!

I went back to the basics with just 1 light to hopefully use the shadows & the negative space to create the mood that I saw in my vision.

There is a basic emotion I want to capture with this portrait, somberness but not in a dark way, if that makes sense. Crissy’s had a hard life & she’s never had it “easy. A cancer survivor & recently had an accident that brought her close to death. I want to portray her past hard life photographically. The clay covering her exterior beauty, the cracks representing her past struggles, and there are small spots of clay that haven’t dried, representing the current struggles that are still healing today. Then there are the patches of clay that have fallen off to reveal her inner beauty waiting to be seen with her hopes & dreams. On a couple of images I opted to add color to some of her skin tones as a representation of her inner beauty breaking free of the black & white darkness! I don’t want this to be interpreted as something dark, but it should be seen as struggling out of the darkness & finding hope to move forward as Crissy has done! She is an inspiration to me & I hope that she will be an inspiration to others after reading this.

This project is a huge step way out of my comfort zone. Not too much planning to acquire the materials needed, which is only clay & talking to Crissy about where I want to take this. A few weeks before the scheduled shoot, we did do a test run on her arm to see what consistency we’d need for the cracked effect. I pitched my concept to my team & everyone was excited to assist with this project.

This project was originally shot on December 4th, 2022

A BIG MAHALO to my amazing Creative Team…Brandon, Eric, Tien & Crissy

Inspiration by…
Kim Henry
Eric Pare

A work in progress...
Learn, grow...repeat!

HIDEKO, WRAPPED IN LACE...08.28.2022

I had the pleasure of working again with Tiff. I wanted to explore using the long purple material that we used on our 1st shoot. I didn’t feel the material was giving me what I wanted so I went out to a local fabric shop & found a stretchy lace type of material, which worked out perfectly. This is how I develop my concepts by exploring my failures, not to say our 1st shoot was a failure, but there were ways that I saw how I could improve on what we did base on what worked & what didn’t. Tiff was perfection, failures on my part…persistence, or just hard head. Lol!

I originally wanted to go to this specific spot that I shot from before but I misjudged the tide & how the waves were breaking which made hiking down a little sketchy, so we opted to stay where we were in a safer area.

Once again working with my team we came up with the concept of having the blue fabric flow off the top of the rocks, like a waterfall & wrap around her body Like water as it flows down back to the sea. The team was da bomb on this concept!!!

The hardest part of any shoot is figuring out the lighting. This was a 3 light setup, a key light, background & hair light. It takes time to tweak the light to see how each light is interacting with the subject & background but once that’s done rest is magic!

The team…
Model: @_hideko.__
Assist: @okinamalina
Assist: @thunder808hi
Assist: Brandon Kawamura

For inquiries & pricing about setting up a photo shoot, contact me.


A work in progress...
Learn, grow...repeat!