It was 2pm when I was lazing on my beanbag reading a magazine, suddenly, the thunderstorm and rain kicked in!

“Oh no!!! What about our shoot?!!!”, Yeah, that was my first thought!

That’s right, we organised a 4pm shoot @ Putrajaya and the weather definitely was not on our side…
3pm, it was still raining heavily…. but our spirit were soaring high. In fact, it was so high that we decided NOT to call it off. We messaged each other and said “Let’s go ahead! Keep believing that we will have good weather by 4pm!”

Left the house at 3:15pm and drove to Putrajaya. Reached there about 4pm and the rain started to subside. At 4:20pm, the rain stopped completely. We met Jezamine 10min later and we started our session immediately.

Jezamine is the current winner of the FHM’s Girl Next Door 2009. A beauty with brain (she is a medical doctor). Not only she is intelligent and friendly, she can speak fluent English, Malay and Hokkien.

We started by taking the photos infront of Ministry of Finance building. It was still drizzling that time. But we still went ahead to setup two flash and did the following shoot.

Bout an hour later, the rain stopped and I saw the beautiful blue sky above us. I took out my beloved Fujifilm S5 Pro and mounted a wide angle lens on it. Got really low and included one of the MOF building wall into the frame.

Ok, Kelvin and Vingel didn’t actually meet each other on the train. Just that we took this in a train station, I just thought it’d be appropriate to title it such.

Alright, let’s talk bout photography.

It was about 5pm and we were in the train station. We waited for quite some time for ONE train to pass by.

While waiting, I quickly setup a Nikon SB900 flash shot thru a diffuser. I put a full CTO infront of the flash wanted to simulate a sunset effect.

However, it didn’t make sense coz the light direction wasn’t real enough to simulate a sunset.

When I was about to approach the light and take out the CTO, I saw a train approaching from far. Immediately I asked the Kelvin to hug Vingel from behind, and changed my white balance to tungsten to neutralize the orange colour produced by the CTO. By doing so, the daylight will change to a slight blue tint too.

I set my camera to a slower shutter speed (1/60s) to capture the train movement but used the flash to freeze the couple.

As the train passed by, Kelvin hugged Vingel tighter… Lovely!

… continued from Part 1.

After some shots with ambient light and with one flash, I decided to add one more light into the setup in Zephyr’s shoot.

The 2nd light is to isolate Zephyr from the background. I used a honeycomb to concentrate the light around her curvy body.

Then I added a white umbrella so that the main light from the Nikon SB900 will be diffused to illuminate Zephyr’s body in a softer manner.

Just before we left the set, I had this urge to have a fun shot. Politely asked Zephyr if she could lower her undergarment to her ankle while I lied on the floor with my camera on my right hand and a Nikon SB800 flash on my left. She agreed to do the shot… even though it was not part of our planned shot and she wasn’t prepared with a sexier undergarment. What a good sport she is!

Some readers wrote to me and asked if I can share some “behind the scene photos”.

Your wish is my command…

This set of “behind the scene” photos are from my previous post on “Freeasy Bridal Chic”. Decided to capture some portraits for Melissa after we were done capturing the gowns. Thanks to Christopher for capturing these behind the scene images on his Nikon D70.

Adjusting and positioning the Nikon Speedlight that triggered on Melissa.

“Now, Melissa, eyesight follow my palm… here… a lil’ bit to your right. Alrite, PERFECT! You’re Beautiful!”

“Alrite, 1… 2… 3… Gorgeous, Com’ on! I know the baldhead infront of you is not good looking, but give some face please…” Melissa smiled, shutter pressed!

Chimping with Melissa and showed her how beautiful she was

… and the end result?

The following shot was done using the same setup.

We were indoor and there was NO WAY the sun could reach this part of the house.

So I placed the Nikon Speedlight on the other side of the window and attached a Full CTO colour gel to it to simulate a sunset effect through the window.

First of all, thanks to AC for the title.

See, Zephyr is not a model. She is just a shy girl next door with no experience posing infront of camera professionally.

When she asked me for an indoor shoot, i was scratching my head what to do with her petite frame. We agreed to do something sexy BUT not vulgar visually.

We started with some shots using the available light.

Then we started to introduce some lights into the picture.

I first introduced one Nikon SB800 Speedlight shot through a white umbrella.

(Nikon D700, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED lens, 1/200s @ f/8, Remote triggered Nikon Speedlight SB800 TTL –0.7EV, shot through white umbrella. Flash positioned on model’s right)

(Nikon D700, Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2D AF-DC lens, 1/100s @ f/3.5, Remote triggered Nikon Speedlight SB800 TTL +1.0EV, shot through white umbrella. Flash positioned 45° on top of model)

(Nikon D700, Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2D AF-DC lens, 1/2000s @ f/2.8, Remote triggered Nikon Speedlight SB900 TTL +2.0EV, Direct flash positioned at 45° on model’s top right)

It was 6:54pm when I took this for Kelvin & Vingel.

The couple were getting tired. The sun was going down and I reckoned we did not have much time left.

I setup a beauty dish behind me, and got a meter reading using a grey patch on the ground. Then under-exposed it by -1.5stops. That gave me an aperture reading of f/8 at 1/1250s with an ISO400.

I then setup a Nikon SB900 in a beauty dish to light up the lovely couple.

I shouted “Alrite! Last photo! Thank you for the hardwork and now kiss each other as though you missed each other for 10yrs!” This will be our last photo and show me some PASSION!”

They really closed their eyes…. hugged and kissed passionately (not erotically).

It was good… for both the couple and the photographer.