Boys – Richie.ie

September 8, 2013July 21, 2018

Ray Byrne in Studio

Ray Byrne is back with a bang on the blog. Ray is another DIT buddy of mine. We have seen Ray before on the street and the beach. Now its time to shoot in studio. He came down with his partner in crime, Rachel Kenny for a fun filled day in studio. The main aim of this shoot was to try out try out some different shoot ideas and to update Rays book. He current portfolio on his agency website still only has the old photos form my last shoot with Ray, so these shots should really help improve it.

We done some shots in studio as well as outside the studio to take advantage of the nice weather we had that day. It’s always good to get out of the studio to take some shots out doors. The shot up top is one of my favs from that particular set.

Back in studio, we got down to business trying some portraits and high-fashiony poses……. mostly just messing around, but it was fun. If you follow my work, you will notice that I am not generally into fashion and the art side of shots. My current style of shooting is to keep things simple. However, its is sometimes good to step out ones comfort zone and try something different. The last time I done something similar was with Ricky a few months ago and that turned out pretty good.

After we finished doing the fashion stuff, we went back to spend a few minutes shooting some headshots. Although not an actor, its always good to have some headshots for a commercial book. My style of headshots that I am working on is with a plain background in a horizontal / landscape format. I may do up a post on my headshot techniques at a later date when I have more time and when I perfect it a little. But for now, you can see a setup shot below.

As you can see above, I shoot headshots on a 70-200mm lens, roughly around 100m. I shoot at F4.0 as at F2.8 at 100mm on that lens, the depth of field is so small that getting the eyes in focus along with the tip of the nose is tricky. Another thing you will notice is that I use light panels on the left and right of the face for light. I have a light behind these to turn them into a nice big soft light source, along with creating big catch lights in the eyes.

Thats all for now, don’t forget to get in touch to book your shoot if you’re looking for headshots, model portfolios or general portraiture.

April 28, 2012July 21, 2018

Ricky Mangala

Ricky got in touch to organise a shoot last month. He had a cool ideas for a high fashion look. I was interested to work with him as I like the idea os trying out something different. Ricky is into his fashion and has got style, as a result he has got some great ideas. He is shooting a lot lately and I am liking his stuff. So he came down to my studio one Saturday for an afternoon session and we got shooting.

For this shoot, I was thinking of going dark with the lighting. It was potentially going to be a bad idea as the cloths were dark and Ricky’s skin is dark. So it was going to be interesting…. interesting good or interesting bad, we would find out.

In order to set this up, I first started to think about rim lighting. If everything was black, (background & subject) then a rim light would be needed for shape and separation. I’m a fan of rim/ side lighting. I used it a lot in my shoot with Bluemoose, check out the portraits. As you can see from the setup shot below with Ricky, I used two gridded lights to create the rim. There is no rocket science with these, turn them to their lowest power, move them around so they can not see the models nose and adjust height to suit. Ricky was holding the Ipad, checking the test shoots out as they came up on it. More on shooting tethered to Ipad at a later date.

You can see the rim lights from the setup shot below….. you can also see the mess that is my studio 🙂 . Another reason why I like rim lights is that is creates a 3-D look of the subject. The key light, is out of the frame, camera left.

Here is another straight out of camera shot. The spot light effect was created by using one light and a grid. I can’t remember which grid that I used, but it was more than likely a 12* grid. It was placed out of frame on the right and slightly above Ricky ( as you can tell by direction of his shadow)

Thats all for now. Any comments or questions can be left below.

April 7, 2012July 21, 2018

Denzil Lacey

Here is a quick post about a recent shoot with Denzil Lacey, who is a returning client. I first met Denzil last year when I had a portrait session with him. Back then he was looking to get some images for his website. Denzil is doing really well for him self these days. He has changed radio stations and his own company is doing really well. Here is a little blurb:

Zava Media is one of Ireland’s top website design and development companies, offering a range of services to suit personal and corporate clients. Established in 2011, our services are founded with over five years of website design and I.T experience providing us with the expertise to work for you. We will ensure your website captivates your customers and potential customer’s attention. www.zavamedia.com

Denzil Lacey is the Programming Assistant and Head of Commercial Production with Classic Hits 4FM, a muti-city Radio Station. The Radio Station was established in 2009 as 4FM and re-launched in 2011 as Classic Hits 4FM and is broadcast to Dublin, Cork, Limerick Galway and Clare. Hear Classic Hits from Abba, The Bee Gees, Adele, 10CC, Ed Sheeran and many more… www.classichits.ie

Contact Me to book a enquire about booking a shoot with me.

March 26, 2012July 21, 2018

James Murphy

This is James Murphy. James is a Personal Trainer and model with Andrea Roche Agency. He came down for a quick shoot the other day looking for some new shots for his book. Here is one of the looks that we tried out.

I wanted to try out some images that were inspired by the work of Kurt Anthierens. This involved getting a more fashion feel to a shot, achieved by lighting and styling. Check out Kurts Folio 1, he has some great images there. This is what we came up with first time around.

The styling was done by James and his girlfriend Teo, Teo herself if a full-time model with 1st Option. The guys went on a shopping spree in Dublin and picked up a few bits and pieces.

January 20, 2012July 21, 2018

Danilo in Studio

Danilo Taveres is one talented guy. He is the latest male model to grace my studio. Danilo is a full time hair-stylist based in Dublin and also is a make-up artist. Brazilian born and bred, he has many strings to his bow… and a nice guy also. I have worked with Danilo a few times now, in both a model capacity and hair and make-up artistry roles.

This time, Danilo came down to do the hair for the Alyson White & Nicola Hughes shoots. At the end of the Shoot, Danilo wanted a few quick shots for his own portfolio, so we took these in literally 3 mins.

I am in the process of trying out various mono & black and white techniques. These two shots of Danilo on his own have brown tint running through them, sort of sepia-ish. Where as the shot of him any Alyson is just black and white. Different looks suite different images naturally, but it would be nice to be able to develop a style that suits all images and to be able to apply the same look to them all. Purely from a consistency point of view.

Lighting wise for these shots of Danilo, there is just one light involved. A big beautiful Elinchrom 135cm Octo box, placed just off to the left. It really is a great light source, giving nice big soft shadows.

As usual, any questions or comment, feel free to leave them below.

September 15, 2011July 21, 2018

Anthony Byrne – Headshots in Dublin

Here are some shots from a recent head shot session with Anthony Byrne from Product 2 Market. It was a fairly straight forward run and gun headshot session.

Anthony is a graduate of UCD Michael Smurfit School of business. He has nearly fifteen years of experience in Business Development, Sales Management and Business Management, both in Ireland and the UK. He also was involved in the start-up and growth of two successful Irish software companies.

Anthony started his own business, Product2Market, in 2008. The company deals with Sales Outsourcing Consultancy and mainly works with Start-ups, Early-stage companies and SME’s.

Besides being the Managing Director of his own company, Anthony also is a Business Mentor with the County Enterprise Board in Dublin and helps support new and emerging Businesses reach their target market.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Anthony_Byrne

We shot around the Guinness Storehouse area in Dublin. The weather was really against us on the day and we were dodging showers of rain in between sunny spells…. typical Irish weather.

Lighting wise, I was running and gunning with an EX580 set up on a light stand with a shoot through umbrella with Pockets Wizards in TTL mode. I still haven’t really gone through the pockets wizards to put them through their paces. I have been so busy with other stuff, but I will get onto it soon.

As it was a bit breezy, the umbrella was not the best idea in the world, but its quick and easy. I kept it fairly close to me for each shot, i.e. close enough to keep my foot on it if a breeze was about to blow it over. It’s time like those when you really could do with an extra hand on a shoot.

August 2, 2011July 21, 2018

Danilo Taveres

I had a shoot with Danilo Taveres at Laytown beach recently. It was a portfolio shoot for Danilo to build up his modelling book. He is a multi-talented guy, he is a a hair stylist, a makeup artist and hope to be model. The shoot was styled by Liam Power. This was the first shoot I worked on with Liam. The second shoot was for the Sunday World Magazine which will be published this week (Aug 7th)

This shoot was a pretty quick shoot as the weather turned nasty on us. It was all natural light except the last shot for which I brought out a single strobe as it was getting dark. I am shooting a lot more natural lately, when it is available. In stead of adding a strobe to fight the sun, I am now starting to control harsh sunlight, to give a soft light, rather than just blasting in fill light with a flash.

This was the last shoot I did with my Nikon Gear. From here on in, it will all be Canon 🙂

June 2, 2011July 21, 2018

Ray Byrne – Street & Beach

Ray Byrne is a new model with Andrea Roche Model Agency. Ray is another one of the many DIT models I have shot since I started out. Ray was involved in the DIT Fashion Show in 2011 on the night he won a contract with AR Agency. Here are a few images from a shoot we had recently to get his book started.

We shot around Dublin City for a while, before heading off to the beach with Rachel Kenny. We got some great shots during the day. Here are the best ones.

The lighting was kept fairly simple for these shots. They were either natural light or there was a single Nikon SB-600 and a shoot through umbrella used. The shot of Rachel and Ray above for example, there was a light used and placed camera left.

September 16, 2010July 21, 2018

Kurtis Hughes in Dublin

Kurtis is a model and singer from Dublin. He is signed with the Bscene Agency Compton now in Dublin. Thanks to the power of FaceBook, he seen my work and asked to set up a portfolio shoot. The rest as they say is history. If you want to get some fresh portfolio shots taken, drop get in touch via the links on the left there.

After some email exchanges, we narrowed the style of the images that he wanted to something with a fashion feel to it and out on location. Location portraits are my speciality so I was confident that we would make it work. We shoot around Dublin’s fair city is some cool locations that I did not even know existed until I found them scouting the few days before.

The shot above of one of my favourites from the day. It is so simple it works. The umbrella is not just for looks, it actually was raining on us so it turned out to be a functioning prop. The lighting makes this kind of shot. My mate Adam was once again there to help me out on this shoot. I will be putting up the usual Setup Post in a few days to give the details on how each shot was generally done.

The beauty about location portraits is that to get a different shot, all you need do is turn the camera a different direction. This garage door was right next to the area where the above shots were taken. There were also a few more taken that were used, but these are the strongest images I think.

By the way, all the shots above were taken just off Grafton St.

The last three shots were taken in a small shopping centre just off Grafton Street. The Orbis Ring Light was used for these also to get that fashion look. I liked the white walls with the black doors when I saw it on my scouting and pictured it working like this in my head with a black suite and white shirt.

Any comments or questions stick them below.

June 8, 2010July 12, 2018

Brendan O’Loughlin

Here are some of the shots from shoot two of three I had on that busy day a while ago. This time with Brendan was was up for a bit of craic and helping my get some shots for my portfolio. The other two shoots being the skateboarders and Gill. The shoot was a quick 30 minutes all in during lunch. It was a great day for it, the sun was shining and every one was in good form.

There was not much of a brief for the shots so we went with the flow. I decided utilise the weather and timed of year and the trees in full green foliage in a Dublin city park. There were a few various shots that ranged from the serious…ish headshots , some casual ones and fun shots etc.

We only had about 30 minutes from start to finish, including set up. So we didnt hang about. I had to head to Portmarnock beach later to shoot Gill.

For the Strobist out there, the set up was basic enough and pretty much my standard:

1x Nikon SB600 speedlight, shoot through umbrella on a light stand. The light had a 1/4 CTO gel to balance it for the sunlight.WB was set to sunlight also. Shutter was 1/125 @ F3.5 and ISO 200.

I shoot in manual most of the time, so I set the aperture first to my desired value. This being determined by the required depth of field and the sharpness of the lens. The sharpness of my lens varies a bit across the various aperture values at various focus distances. Anyways… so what ever the camera was telling me to set the shutter to get a correct exposure on the background, I under exposed it by a stop or 1 1/3 stops. I then used the flash to bring up the light on the subject to a suitable level. Once I had the power on the flash right then I adjusted the position of the light a bit to get it just right.

Bearing in mind that this was all going on within a few minutes so it was a bit rushed. The sunlight on the screen also makes it a bit harder to see what you are really getting. A bit more time and some more lights would mean more power to over come the sunlight and underexpose the background even more… That is for next time. This was a nice quick exercise in strobist work though.