American Crew

João from Barbearia dos Arcos contacted me again to shoot his entry in the American Crew All Star Challenge, so I used the same two-light setup as last year, but swapped out the small speedlights with a couple of Elinchrom BRX500 strobes and different modifiers.
In the first photo I positioned an umbrella camera right and a gridded beauty dish camera left, behind him, to create that little rim light and highlight the cut.

On the second photo, I wanted to go a little Dan Winters-y, so I kept the umbrella camera right slightly rotated towards me and moved the beauty dish dead center above camera, for ring-flash kind of light. (still saving up for the Profoto ProRing2 Plus!)

I really want to explore more of this kind of work and have my own studio to experiment with lights.

Beatriz

Beatriz called me a while back to book in a portrait shoot. She’s a designer and is about to launch her new website, so new profile photos were needed.
I have always wanted to shoot with an Oliphant Studios backdrop, but since those are completely out of my price range, I use whatever’s available around me to simulate one. And this is where this place comes in: it’s a little corridor in a cafeteria at the University in Aveiro and the walls are plastered in grey - my favourite.
It was pouring, but that didn’t stop us from using the beautiful soft light that only a rainy day makes possible.

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Black Unicorns' Joana

Joana is a good friend and the designer behind Black Unicorns, who developed the logo, branding and packaging for my other project Fotografamos.
She was in need of profile photos for social media and her new website, so we went to my favorite two locations and shot using natural light. Marina was my assistant for the day, holding a diffuser on a few of the portraits.

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American Crew I

It’s probably a man thing, but I’ve been going to the same barbershop for over twenty years and João, the actual owner, is the only barber who cuts my hair. We’ve been good friends ever since, so it came to no surprise when he told me he was competing in the American Crew All Star Challenge.

The rules were simple: black background, no props visible, black and white and proper lighting to showcase the hairstyle.

I set up a roll or white paper and lit the model with a couple of Nikon SB28 speedlights and two umbrellas: one shoot-thru and another bouncing the light from the flash. Here’s Marina stepping in for me to test the lights (at the time pregnant with our daughter Júlia).

The results are pretty clean and simple and there’s so much you can accomplish with a pair of tiny speedlights and lightstands. The umbrellas are Westcott’s 43”.

Fernando & Ana

It’s been a few years since I’ve been in Algarve, but whenever we go, we always try to see Fernando and Ana, who are wedding photographers based in Guia, Algarve. One of the last times we got together, I managed to get my hands on a giant octabox and shot a couple of portraits of them both.
The setup was pretty straightforward: I shot a Nikon SB28 triggered using a pair of Pocket Wizard Plus III through the softbox, positioned camera right for all the portraits.

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