When the PREP TO POST team gets together for a playdate, the creative juices overflow. Check out this Spring beauty story produced by Sean Armenta, Leibi Carias, Sienree Du and Jade Corinne.

Check out Hairstylist Sienree Du’s beautiful fashion editorial in Bunker Hill Magazine shot in the desert 2 hours east of Los Angeles. She has a full behind the scenes write up and tips on hairstyling in her blog post.

Hairstylist and PREP TO POST educator, Sienree Du was recently featured in a Bello Magazine fashion editorial.

Be sure to keep up with Sienree on her BLOG and follow her on Twitter!

We would like to thank Auraline Beauty for their special participation and for supplying us with product gift bags as well as the help of Veronica Nunez and Wayne Hayes.

Here are the final images from the workshop showcasing lighting for different types of hair and makeup finishes and textures.

The PREP TO POST team got together for an awesome project a few months back. We were booked by Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine to shoot a feature on NCIS star Cote De Pablo, who plays Agent Ziva David on the hit CBS show. Sean Armenta, Dondee Quincena, Jerome Brua and Sienree Du were all on set lending their talents. Shot on location in Los Angeles at the lovely home of Sienree, we spent a beautiful day with the actress who was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Freelance Art Director Jamie Breuer, stylist Holly Copeland, makeup artist Mathias Alan and set decorator Ninaki Priddy rounded out the crew. Here is a behind the scenes look, produced by Jerome Brua and Mark Culatta of Litmus Project

Many thanks to the support of TetherTools, ThinkTank Photo and Phase One

We had an amazing time this weekend at the DSLR Cinematography Workshop! Jerome Brua dropped some serious science on us, sharing his expertise on filmmaking from several different perspectives. Having worked in a wide range of projects from network broadcasting to reality television to music videos and even wedding gigs, the attendees benefitted from his practical working experience. Two days were spent learning everything from the history of filmmaking, to the basics of cinematography, shooting hands on exercises, and editing the footage.

Beachtek furnished the workshop with one of their audio solutions for the DSLR, the DXA-SLR. Small HD provided their amazing DP6 HDMI Field Monitor, while ThinkTank Photo and Red Giant Software provided some fabulous raffle items.

The attendees were able to shoot some footage which were used to develop their post production workflow on both Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.

Many thanks to Dondee Quincena and Wayne Hayes for their assistance over the weekend.

In this installment of HOW IT WAS LIT, I will walk you through a shoot I did with Keri Hilson for a Wet Seal campaign.

We always enter into a shoot with an art direction in mind, and this time was no different. The creative director and myself collaborated via email a week or so before the day of the shoot; we sent each other some images that served as inspiration for the desired art direction. We agreed to shoot against a plain black background to give the images a more sexy, sultry feel, as well as provide the client with some negative space that they could easily lay type over. To give a more polished look to an otherwise plain background, I decided to lay some black glossy plexiglass over the seamless paper to give the set a reflective floor.

Immediately I knew I would have to provide some sort of edgelight in order to give some distinct separation between Keri and the background. I also wanted to use modifiers that would highlight her beautiful skin. I also knew from the get go that I would be adding a little bit more of a glowy effect to her skin in post, and this also helped me select the right modifiers to use.

Initially we tried to use a gridded silver 7″ reflector, but the lighting pattern would be way too narrow to allow a lot of movement from Keri. I definitely wanted some of the shots to capture her as the performer that she was, and this meant being able to let her move and dance around set. I needed to find a balance between freedom of movement and not compromising the lighting direction. I upgraded the key to an undiffused gridded beauty dish which provided a light that fell off around her waist. We then set up four silver 42″ umbrellas to serve as the rimlight; two stacked above each other on either side of Keri, at about a 45º behind her. The reason for using two stacked umbrellas is to provide a wide enough light pattern that would give a head-to-toe edgelight. Since these would be throwing light towards my lens causing flare and haze, I needed to flag them off, and for that I used two black V-flats. These also prevented the light from the umbrellas from spilling all over the studio and provided some direction towards Keri. Edgelighting with silver umbrellas produces a beautiful crisp but soft highlight.

Whenever I use multiple lighting sources, I always try to approach it in layers. I always begin with just one light, usually the key, and layer my lighting after that – making sure that the succeeding light sources support the lighting direction rather than taking on their own personalities. In order to light precisely and accurately, you must use a handheld light meter, without which you would subject yourself to a lot of useless and time consuming guesswork. This can be costly especially when working with celebrities and commercial clients who are not very keen on waiting on set while you fiddle around trying to determine your lighting ratios and exposure. It is situations like these where my Sekonic L-358 becomes my greatest tool.

Here is a behind the scenes look at the shoot with Keri, which should further provide you with more insight on how it was lit.

The two-day event covered the process of shooting a fashion editorial from start to finish. We went over how to conceptualize and communicate effectively with your team, talked about how light, styling, art direction and your team all collaborate together, and showed how to retouch more efficiently. The attendees learned first hand from hairstylist extraordinaire Noogie Thai on how to better communicate with hairstylists. Au Mauricio discussed how having a good makeup artist on set saves hours in post production, and Julie Vo shared the process of how a stylist pulls clothing for a shoot. Towards the end of the workshop we discussed the business side of photography and ended with a portfolio review.

Phase One provided us with their 645DF camera including their flagship IQ180 touchscreen digital back which captures 80 megapixels of pure photographic goodness. The base RAW file immediately yields 80MB, resulting in a processed TIFF that weighs in at 229MB at 8bits and 458MB at 16bits. It prints at an impressive 34″ x 26″ straight out of the camera without any cropping or resizing. Surprisingly, there was very little delay in image transfer from the back into Capture One. In addition, we were able to play with an array of their Schneider lenses:  the 75-150mm , a 45mm, a 55mm Leaf Shutter, an 80mm Leaf Shutter, a 110mm Leaf Shutter, and the 120mm Macro. With the leaf shutter lenses we were easily syncing at 1/1250th using PocketWizards. The new vertical grip syncs with the Profoto Air system, allowing a max sync speed of 1/1600th of a second.

Imagenomic, TetherTools, and ThinkTank Photo all came through with great raffle items to award to the attendees, as well as special offers and discounts from Blinkbid and Smugmug.

Many thanks to Wayne Hayes, Jack Cruz, Ren Lara, and Marco Peruzzo for their assistance over the weekend.

Next on the horizon is a Lighting for Hair and Makeup Workshop that is open to not only photographers, but makeup artists and hairstylists as well. Registration for both events is now ongoing.

Hey guys welcome to another installation of PHOTO LAB!

Today I show you how to make your own Chinese Lantern, or a lighting globe, out of tracing paper. Many of the major lighting brands have their own version, the most popular probably being the ProGlobe from Profoto.

A Chinese Lantern is used quite a bit in the filmmaking or movie-making industry, when they need an omni-directional light source. They actually come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from small to epically huge. They are called Chinese Lanterns because they resemble the festive paper lanterns we are all familiar with. It resembles the kind of light you would get from a bare household bulb. It is an almost 360º light source, and quite versatile in its use. It is a great way to light interiors, much like your household lighting would, but it is also great to use with people. In the studio, I am actually able to light my cyc evenly using a single head fitted with this exact tracing paper modifier.

You can use a lantern to simulate a street light or bounce light off large surfaces for soft and even lighting. Here is an example of an image from the setup above: