Hayley Ryan Test Shoot

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Hayley Ryan is one of the most famous press call models of yesterday year. The stunning good looks and fab body could often ben see in the papers for various pr purposes. She has been with Assets Agency for most of that time as far as I know.

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Hayley dropped down with her heavily pregnant friend Olivia Byrne who is also great at Hair & Makeup. Olivia got a few cool bump pictures for herself also.

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It was amazing working with Hayley, obviously her stunning looks makes any photographer’s job that big easier. For this particular shoot, I loved Hayley’s tan lines. I would think that most other photographers would retouch out the tan lines, however I am not that big into retouching and plus, I think it adds a natural, edgy look to the shoots.

Let me know what you think about the tan lines below in the comments.

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Dana Arikane

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Dana Arikane, the Latvian beauty dropped down to the studio for this, our second shoot recently. Our first shoot was nearly a year ago… hard to believe. That shoot was for press – see here. This  was a test shoot that we organise to try out some new fashion and sexier looks, also to work with some new style team members.  The team consisted of Hairstylist, Aine Ryan, Makeup Artist Sophie Wong and Stylist Laura Mullett ( lauramullet.com).

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Dana is a fantastic model and has a naturally sexy look, so pulling of that look was no problem. Combine the Eastern European looks,  that attitude and this gorgeous lingerie that Laura sourced in Gorey, it is a great combination. The Boutique in Gorey is Dee’s Lingerie.

The shot above is one of my favourites from the shoot. The lingerie is of a shear design and you can see a hint of nipple through it which is ( in my opinion) is classy and attractive. Unfortunately shots like this may still be seen by some to be over sexy or raunchy and thus there are a few people would actually do this kind of shot. At the end of the day… everyone has nipples.  There are still people on Instagram and Facebook though who are very quick to report images with nipple on them.

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This set of images is another series of shoots on the white wall and the Terry Richardson Lighting.  I shot these with canon flash on the camera using a Custom Bracket Mini. It is a great little tool that allows the flash to be placed over the lens axis when in portrait mode. It reduces the appearance of the shadows.

I shot these with just the bare flash, no diffuser on the flash. One of the things you notice with the bare flash is the light falloff – dark corners. Dark corners are more noticeable here as the wall is white in reality which appears grey when under exposed. Speaking of under-exposing, when shooting with the flash on camera, I usually shoot ETTL. This works great most of the time. When you are shooting against a white wall like this, you need to dial in exposure compensation. If you don’t the camera things that the scene is over light ( with all the white) and will then reduce the flash power. Generally +2 stops is a good place to start I found.

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The shot above was lit using a standard studio strobe with a grid spot on it, hence the spotlight effect.

For the shots below, I was experimenting with the blinds I have in the office. I set a light up in the office and shot through the blinds, which created this effect. The light was about 20 feet away from Dana in this shot and hence the harsh shadow, despite her being away from the wall also. Normally the shadow gets softer the further away you move from the wall.

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Below is the same setup, just a different angle and in colour.

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Finally I will finished up with Dana in makeup with the fab Sophie Wong. As always, if you have any questions on anything,  leave them below in the comments section.

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throwback. 🙋 #model #repost

A video posted by Dana Arikane (@danaarikane) on

Hazel O’Sullivan Lingerie Shoot

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Here are a few images from one of my latest shoots with the fantastic Hazel O’Sullivan, shot in Vanilla Nightclub a few months ago. We shot this before Hazel ventured into the Big Brother for her 10 week appearance on the Channel 5 show. This was my 5th shoot with Hazel now and I think it was one of the best yet. We shot these shots for press and to start selling posters to meet the demands of Hazel’s fans for posters. You can view the prints and sizes available for sale HERE

Below is an example of an A1 poster size print available 🙂

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This was a popular shoot before it even was released… thanks to twitter. I took the picture of Hazel below to put up on twitter for Hazel to retweet to her fans. Low and behold,  it was picked up by the papers and the Irish Daily Star printed the picture the next day. This is one of the con’s of posting images of shoots up on social media, especially if your shooting for press anyway. Normally I would not put up an image of a shoot that was destined for press, or if I do, it would be more of a behind the scenes type shot as opposed a full on shots as below. The lesson to be learned is to crack down tighter on the model’s doing it 🙂

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This our second shoot in Vanilla. The first one was for the “Darts Babe” shoot last year. Big thanks once again  to Pedro & Ruben for looking after us. Make sure to check out Vanilla if your looking for a good night out in Dublin – http://www.vanillanightclub.com/

 

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Buy Posters of Hazel here: www.richie.ie/hazel

Leah O’Reilly in Studio

Meet Assets Agency model Leah O’Reilly. She is a popular Lingerie and Presscall model and she is amazing to work with. Leah is not just a pretty face, she is also a shrewd businesswoman also. She is one half of top Irish Jewelry company Crystals and Co along with Emily Mackeogh. Their “About Us” blurb goes along the lines of …. Crystals and Co launched in November 2009 by best friends and business partners Leah O’Reilly and Emily Mackeogh. Spotting a gap in the market for affordable, good quality on trend costume jewellery and accessories the girls started to collect their favorites and design their own pieces.

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Leah dropped down to my studio a while about along with her friend Karena Graham. Karena was coming down for a portfolio update and I have been talking to Leah for ages about getting her down for a shoot, so the sun and moons aligned just right and it worked out nicely. Leah is busy girl with the business so getting a time when both of us were free was difficult.

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I love this shot above of Leah. It is a beautiful natural laugh that I caught just after telling her one of my famous bad jokes. I believe that having a laugh on a shoot is very important. Having fun and a bit of craic is what it is all about.

Here is a super quick instagram video of Leah’s prints coming out of my printer. I print all my own portfolios and work in-house, right up to A1 poster size.

Aimee Connolly was once again at hand with her fantastic make-up skills. Make sure to check out her FaceBook Make, Make-up By Aimee. In terms of styling, Leah styled her self for this shoot. She had some ideas as to what she wanted to achieve from the shoot. After getting the gist of them and tweaking it a bit, the above is the result.

Rachel Wallace in Studio

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Heressss Rachel, back on the blog for her third outing. I am a little late with this shoot as this was back in late February, better late than never though right 😉 . It is a good sigh when you are too busy to blog because you are two busy shooting portraits in Studio during the week and Sports & Events with DE Photo at the weekends.

Rachel came down to my studio for a shoot  on a Saturday to get some extra shots for our spread in the SUN, which was a piece on her being in the ICA Bootcamp on RTÉ. We had got plenty of images in the shoot a few days before in the Hotel Shoot, however it so happened that we were both free that day and Rachel popped down for some extra shots… and also to have the craic. My studio is just over an hour down the road from Dublin so it was a quick journey for her. See all my published stuff HERE

Amy Mcguire was also free on the day and she came over for a few hours. Amy is a talented Make-Up Artist who lives pretty close near Gorey, which is handy. Amy uses proper airbrushing to apply makeup and it gives a great finish. I have worked with Amy a few times now and we always have the craic shooting.

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So for this shoot, we didnt have a set style in mind, we just wanted some fun, cute and sexy shots… as thats what the papers usually like. So bikinis and lingerie were the order of the day. We used this cute blue/white set along with a pink/white version. I prefer the look of the blue set, but the girls liked the pink set better. For the pink set, Amy “dolled” up the makeup a bit more and added some pony tails for a cute effect.

I shot both of these in the lighting style that I am liking more and more each time I use it, as I think it suits the simple look of the studio space. Its a simple 3 light setup, with a main 135cm Octa bank on camera right giving a nice big soft light along with 2x 60cm softboxes to the rear and side of Rachel as rim lights. Simple yet effective.. A large diffusion panel is used on the left to add a tiny bit of fill light on the left side of Rachel to fill in the shadows a bit. Simples.

The large space in the studio means that I can use my 200mm 2.8 at the 150-200mm range while Rachel is close enough to still get her full body in. Although the lights at their lowest power still give F4, even at F4, with the subject close and with a 200mm focal length, the background still goes out of focus beautifully. A pretty nice shallow depth of field is still achievable with this lense at F5.6…. even F8 is you are zoomed all the way in at 2oomm and your subject is at the minimum focus range… great for portraits. Some times with two shallow a depth of field and you can get problems with one eye being in focus and the other out of focus is the face is not straight on etc.

After we had got the shots that we needed, we now turned to playing and getting our own shots. This is usually the best part of a shoot, the testing and experimenting part. I have an idea in my head for a real moody black and white…. Kate Moss type shot. I had Rachel in mind for this shot specifically as I knew from BEFORE that she could pull it off. Rachel is a super poser, every time that flash went she was instantly in a different look and post, like a true pro. One of these shots ended up bing one my my favorite shots (below).

Thats about it for now. Plenty of shoots to come over the next while, from clients, to portfolios and test shoots, so check back soon 🙂

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