Pokafase

So.... this week was my second shoot with Phoenix-area hip-hop artist Pokafase. We had a full day planned with a handful of separate locations, etc.... but we actually blew our whole shooting time at the first location, so we are doing a separate shoot this upcoming week.

All of the images from last weeks were car shots, between a brand new Range Rover, and a classic Chevy Impala:

And here's a shot from the Range Rover set:

So, firstly, both the Impala and the Range Rover were his friend's vehicles..... and we were restricted by location (In front of his friend's house...) so in order to avoid houses, other cars, misc. distracting details, etc., all the shots were either looking up, looking down, or very tightly cropped.

Obviously, the location was far from ideal, so it really was a bit of a challenge keeping it with his style when we were in a suburban neighborhood, with minivans and U-Haul trucks driving past us!

For the lighting, I used my regular 'location-set' (my Norman 400Bs). Most of the shots were a variation of a Main + Kicker for the lighting.... with just a couple exceptions. The first exception was placing one of the Norman heads under the Impala, leaving me just one head left for my subject either as a main OR kicker option (left).

Here is the other vaiation.... though I'm not really liking it too much.... but I went for a kicker only, using the sun as my main light. It was a BRIGHT day... so I needed BOTH Norman heads to get a really bold rim light effect, so I gave it a try. To me, it ended up looking a little flat, not much depth in the lighting. I would have used a reflector at least on his face for more lighting control, but I didn't have one with me at the time.

So overall..... I gave the shoot an 'OK.' I did not like the location, but you don't always get to choose, you have to take what you get and make it work. I think the cars worked well, and out of the 60-70 images from the Impala/Range Rover sets, we'll probably just pull one or two for actual use, so we have at least a couple good shots in there.

Part 2 will hopefully be coming this week after we shoot. We are supposed to be shooting with a Ferrari (AND better location) as well as some indoor stuff, so I'll make another post talking about the images we got, and how it went.

Still in the planning/scheduling stage for my helicopter shoot too. Hopefully this week we will get the approval to shoot from a hospital rooftop, I'm excited about that one.