I finally got a chance to use my new fog machine. This photo was conceived for the “Wish You Were Here” project that I just started working on. Marissa is one of my very dear friends, and we had just returned from an interesting day at Sam Ash Kapok Tree in Clearwater, where Yngwie Malmsteen had a concert and guitar signing.
I felt inspired when we got back to my house, the cool breeze was amazing and we stopped at a tiny little shack of a bar on the way home, so I really wanted to shoot something cool that night.
Marissa was a trooper for this one… I had the fog machine sitting at her waist, literally 6 inches from her body and shooting fog all over her face… we were both sweating profusely, but this photo turned out to be pretty stunning…
SB-900 flash tethered with a curly cord thingy, camera left. I was holding the flash up in the air, pointed down at Marissa with my left hand, while shooting with my right hand and bracing the camera against my left shoulder for stability… Joe McNally style! One of my friends just bought his book “The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes.” Now I regret ever buying bulky strobes, because my compact little Nikon flashes can do everything the strobes can and MORE!
“Heroes for Ghosts”
View more new work and new website layout at www.nikkidevereux.com
Filed under: photography, pink floyd, wish you were here | Tags: pink floyd
Lately I have been missing some people in my life. People who have come and gone, people I haven’t seen in a long time, people who simply walked out, never looked back, down a long road that I will not travel…
Me and my friend Miguel were walking to get lunch last Saturday (FREE MUSEUM DAY!), in between museums on a beautifully sweaty afternoon, and he started singing “Wish You Were Here.” I joined in and before long we were walking down the street belting out the song together. And thus this series was born.
The first photograph is titled, “In a Fish Bowl.”
Filed under: 86042
Here are a few more Johnny Munster photos. The black and white photos were taken with a Mamiya 645 Super, my medium format film camera. I used Ilford ISO 200 film.
For light in the outdoor beach shots, it was just before sunset and we simply used a reflector. I forgot to bring the battery pack for my strobes so I had to just go au naturel. The light for the first photo was a strobe to Johnny’s right, with a black card to deepen the shadows on her left. I stood on a chair and shot downward. I owe many thanks to Johnny for being open to my crazy ideas.
We shot at Passe A Grille Beach, with makeup artist Jessica Scott. We laid out a blanket, drank some wine, and enjoyed the sunset while taking lots of gorgeous photos!
I am going to create some tutorials coming soon, so stay tuned. Just a few simple things like Photoshop tricks and stuff like that.
Also, I’d just like to get personal and say that despite the fact that things aren’t going great in my personal life right now, photography and making art have really kept me grounded and I don’t know where I would be without them. Even when the people in your life hurt you, art will always be there to save you and keep you strong.
Filed under: 86042
Johnny Munster is the model that helped me carry out my Bjork shoot. She’s awesome to work with, incredible at what she does, and a cool person! We drank wine on the beach and took some stunning photos. I’ve only finished a couple of them, so here they are.
Natural light with reflector. I brought my strobe, but of course I forgot the battery, so we had to make do with the sun. Not so bad, but the dramatic sunset photos that I wanted to capture were impossible. Oh well!
Both versions of the photo are shown. More to come soon!
I also updated my website, so check it out at www.nikkidevereux.com
Filed under: 86042
This week I’ve had tons of shoots, two of which I’m super stoked about… Johnny Munster and Hamilton Hill. Hamilton and I did a cool shoot on top of a building in downtown St. Pete, dramatic skies, awesome location, all around great stuff. Johnny helped me pull off my Bjork shoot and then we went down to Passe-a-Grille Beach and did some fashion/beauty stuff. She’s just gorgeous and really good at what she does.
Well, I just wanted to check in. Photos to come from both shoots. Here are some unedited sky photos and outtakes from the Johnny Munster shoot…
Filed under: photography
Regina is my new old friend. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, but after the first few hours we felt like we had known each other forever. I am sure she will be a lifelong friend. She is beautiful on the inside and outside, as you will see from her photos.
We shot first in my old bedroom, soon to be the room of some lucky stranger who wants to be a part of my weird family. It is pretty large and has north light, so it’s perfect for photos. My walls are this rich bluish sea color, and Regina’s skin tones and hair went beautifully with the richness of the colors. The room is small, but so are we, so we didn’t need much space. I used a strobe pointed at the white ceiling for most of the shots, just to enhance the light from the window.
For the starry night shot, I exposed for sky and lit Regina’s face with a strobe at lowest power. We only took 5 shots outside because both of us were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, so I am glad that this one was so good. Regina is a very willing and patient model and her natural beauty was just stunning with all the colors swimming around in these photos.
After the shoot, which took about 2.5 hours, we were tired, happy and hungry, so we went to Applebee’s because it’s cheap. The barbecue chicken salad is AWESOME!
Filed under: 86042
I always want to schedule at least two or three shoots a week, but I am never able to, because I am the type of quasi-anal planner that has to have a shoot ORCHESTRATED, not just thrown together. A few weeks ago I did a shoot with a model that I had just found the day before in a last minute casting call, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t have time to think about theme, wardrobe, makeup, etc., and it just didn’t feel right. The best shoots I’ve had have been ones where I plan for months and then at the shoot I have a whole team of people to help, including an assistant, MUA, my props and location are perfectly thought out, sometimes I even make my own shot list. Oh, and not to mention the refreshment table, which is always an amazing addition, because then everyone is happy for hours! It’s kind of anal but it works for me.
I have the next two weeks off and I’m trying to plan a lot of shoots to keep my creativity flowing and use my time wisely. Lately I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from movies and film, and my two latest projects were born from watching Bjork’s “Hyperballad,” directed by Michel Gondry, and a movie called “Brideshead Revisited,” which is based upon the literary classic of the same name. I am still working on the background for the Bjork project, but I have a model and makeup artist all lined up. For the Brideshead project I am still working on a model.
I am going to shoot both with my Mamiya 645 Super, so I have to buy a pocket wizard so that I can use the strobe with it. If you’ve never seen a pocket wizard, it is just a little radio thing that plugs into the camera and then another thing that plugs into the strobe light, and when you press the shutter the strobe is triggered by the radio. It’s pretty freakin’ awesome. Anyone using strobes needs one.
From now on, for my personal shoots I am going to try to use the Mamiya 645 Super exclusively, though I’ll bring my Nikon D300 and my Nikon N6006 35mm film camera as well just for fun. I just love film so much, and the Mamiya renders color and light so beautifully.
One of the reasons I’m writing is because I get so frustrated sometimes because I have so many ideas running through my head all the time, and sometimes I just overwhelmed because I want to try to control them and reign them in but I can’t. And then I just get lost in this sea of ideas and I can’t single any of them out to try to really get them going. I mean, aside from the Bjork thing and the “Brideshead Revisited” thing, I have so many others, I could be shooting EVERY SINGLE DAY, but I just don’t seem to have the time or money to put all of these ideas into action, especially considering my very detailed organization of my shoots. I would need like three or four more of me in order to get that many shoots organized per week.
Filed under: photography
It was a gray day, the third of a string of 5 gray days. The first two had been rainy, torrential downpours all day long so that you had no desire to set foot outside the house. On this particular day, the rain had ceased, though the overcast, misty sky was a threat. This grayness inspired the following self-portait, taken on Passe A Grille Beach just before a downpour.
People were walking by and staring at me as I ran back and forth from my camera on its tripod, trying to get that perfect shot. I took my glasses off, so I couldn’t see anything and thus felt a little less self-conscious, though I tripped on more than one occasion and cut my foot on a rock once. I didn’t have a remote, so I had to use the camera’s timer, which is probably why the focus is a bit soft. Anyway, a little photoshop magic, and here she is…
Filed under: 86042
I have a new idea for a shoot, and it involves one of Bjork’s videos directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, etc.), and I already have a model who is super thrilled about the idea! This is good. The model is awesome and I am excited. She is very flexible with incredible facial and body expressions, so I think it will be super to work with her. I am going to get to work making the background and planning out lighting and such. I love orchestrating photo shoots!
Filed under: 86042
I was driving by an old warehouse building in downtown St. Petersburg and I saw this really cool window reflecting the sky. Of course I pulled over in that lonely alley to take this photo.
