Cali, Colombia
Hace algunos años publicaba un artículo sobre las tendencias de la estética femenina, y la evolución del prototipo de belleza a través de los años.
En aquel entonces hice algunos estudios de fotografía, explorando otros estándares de belleza, que ciertamente rompen los paradigmas infundados por los medios de comunicación y la popularidad de las cirugías estéticas. Continue reading “Desnudos reales – En búsqueda de romper los paradigmas de la estética femenina”
I like masks and outdoors photography.
I took these photos last year, in a private area near Great Falls. The lighting and the environment were perfect, and the model helped a lot during the session, recommending poses and following my recommendations. Continue reading “Black mask”
During the photo shoot of the Dark Queen mask, I decided to play with a dark veil given the strong wind of that day.
I actually wanted to experiment with wind and capture motion in other photo shoots, but unfortunately weather didn’t help that much, but the scenery, the weather and the concept was shooting this time were perfect. Continue reading “Dark veil – experiments with high contrast and motion”
We had a blizzard some days ago and everything was covered by snow, which made an ideal landscape for a new photo shoot with the Dark Queen mask.
However, shooting in snow is not that easy, the natural light is a bit hard to manage because it bounces everywhere. In addition to that, it’s hard to set a good exposure that captures texture in both the snow and the subject given the high contrast – you end having texture in the snow with a dark subject, or a good exposition in the subject with a white non-textured background.
Las siguentes son fotografías de algunas obras de arte expuestas en el museo The Getty en Los Angeles, California.
When I was building the Dark Queen mask, I made an ornament with some leftover pieces, designed to be worn in the forehead. Initially, I intended to utilize this ornament in a dark concept, but when the model wore it, it looked more like an avant garde version of an indigenous plume.
Hace poco adquirí un escaner de negativos, y he estado recuperando ejercicios de fotografía de hace unos 10 años. Este ejercicio que comparto a continuación tenía dos objetivos: retrato de niños e iluminación artificial.
I wanted to experiment with new props in my photo shoots and decided to create a mask, out of a cardboard. The process was empiric and improvised. It was like practicing origami in the beginning, creating volumes by cutting and folding the cardboard, and then giving shape to the mask by incorporating the leftover pieces that I was cutting out.
This is how the foundation looked like when I got the shape done.
Then, I started the second part of the process, which consisted of bathing or dipping little pieces of paper in glue mixed with water, and then pasting them in the foundation.
This process gave the mask a hard finish and texture.
Finally, I used gold acrylics to paint the whole mask.
I realized that I needed a special dress for that mask, so I went to a fabrics store and bought 3 yards of velvet-like fabric to simulate a cloak, which made a perfect match.
The mask didn’t work quite well for the model who wore it, though, it didn’t fit her well and she had trouble to see behind it, in great part because the holes for the eyes have the measurement of my face (I build that!), so I’ll keep that in mind for the next mask I design.
I took these photos at around noon. The sun light was coming from the top and it created high contrast in those areas where it was hitting directly, and also projected harsh shadows of leaves and branches over the model.
I decided to explore different angles and move around while the model stayed at the same spot.
When you work with natural light, the only way to change the lighting is by keep moving and take photos from different points.
In order to give a feeling of being deep into the woods, I intentionally included some out-of-focus branches and leaves in front of the model.
I’m very pleased with the outcome of this photo shoot. The model did a great job, she was very patient and stayed cool wearing that mask, and was always open to explore different poses and angles during all the session.
This photo shoot was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 70-200 mm lens.
I recently bought a film scanner (Jumbl 22MP All-In-One) and I’m scanning all the photos I took with my old film cameras between 1994 and 2005.
Unfortunately, I didn’t store the negatives good enough and most of them have scratches. In addition to that, the scanner is not perfect and it adds very little dust to the scanned photos, but despite that I’m really happy to see my old photos again, and actually surprised to see those images, they are actually good, keeping in mind that I hadn’t taken any course in photography at that time and I was just learning from books.
These are some photos I took in Cambridge, England in 2003. I lived there for 9 months and used to visit the colleges and register the details of their beautiful architecture.
One of the most popular colleges is the Kings College. This is its chapel as seen from one side:
I took these photos of a friend two weeks ago, near the Potomac river, in a quite private spot away from the public.
My wife assisted me with bouncing light to the model, and retouching her hair and makeup. This was an informal photo session, we made a little bit of planning with a different idea in mind and we ended shooting nudes, which turned out to be fantastic, thanks to all those rich textures given by the light and trees that were around us.
