Sarah's Fashion & Photography Party-ric woods photography

It looks like there is too much at Sarah's Fashion & Photography Party to be classified as work.
Maree and Bridie capture this group busting loose.Party enquiries can be had from maree@ricwoods.com or call the studio on ric woods photography 02 4962 1066
ric woods photography, the go to studio for FUN & FASHION & PHOTOGRAPHY PARTIES for girls.

ProAm Photography Course Drawn Today

Congratulations to Xanthe the winner of the Pro Am Photographic Course Competition.
Xanthe is able to choose a course that suits her needs valued at $220.
Download our 21 page course Booklet HERE
Thanks to David the owner of Pro Am ( our lab of choice) and everyone that entered.There will other chances to join our workshops in the future.

maternity and newborn photography workshops

Meela, was the star of our recent workshops on newborn photography, so aware at such a young age. At our course we had several lighting changes.Three lights and how to maximise depth of field and minimising distortion of the subjects through lens and aperture selection.Rim lighting high and low key. One light with reflectors.

mother & child

new family

dad and meela

eye contact and voice recognition

some of the students

Dad was fantastic with Meela, mum looks on

Dad getting ready to change Meela's pose

Small groups are great to teach.

Here I am explaining to one of the group about talking to the subject....I did this with a practical demonstration of pointing the camera at the photographer for 1-2 minutes without speaking and using the shutter...they "got it" and we had fun.One of mothers to be in the background, you will be seeing more of her as her "bump" grows.

Here Maree comforts Meela's under study....the under study wasn't needed at all. Our primary focus is the 1. the comfort of the child 2. the comfort of the parent/s and 3. getting the shot.

Here is the results of images of Amy, one of our previous subjects, using 2 lights

Amy in this shot is illuminated by 3 lights.This creates a whole different feel.

Our workshop "Creating beautiful B&W's" is scheduled to run again in 2011.Maree is compiling lots of new courses for next year.

If you would like more workshop details email maree@ricwoods.com.

Angie - Our 41 year old grandmother builds her own PAAL KIT HOME

What a great day it was for this shoot....blue skies and white clouds are great for our real estate photo shoots.Angie did a great job not only building the house but handling the heat and the bright sun and lights for this shoot. This Paal home was photographed for their web and brochures.The images are pretty much as shot .The landscaping (lawn) will be added in post production...Great work Angie.Check out these Paal Homes, they have wonderful big verandas...the beat the Aussie Sun.

CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT-RUSH JOB

Kristan & Matt commissioned us to shoot their portraits for Christmas gifts very very close to Christmas. We completed the shoot ,they made their pics and thanks to David at Pro Am photo lab we were able to get the matted prints to them in time to put them under the tree.

Maree and myself really like to shoot on white and black paper backdrops. It gives a clean result without not conflicting with the colours people are wearing (in colour images) The black paper is easily gelled to create coloured backdrops.

Maree is asked to do many jobs in her roll as studio manager and second photographer.
These include capturing images,lighting and set changes, image orders, up coming promotions, making wild noises to get the attention of peoples pets, wiping infants noses,as well as.......


.........making sure that people are relaxed and comfortable during the shoot.......

keeping and eye on stray hairs that may be out of place which can mean hours of photoshop work or worse....deleting the hero shot because there is hair over a subjects eye etc

....above she makes final adjustments to Matt's hair

At times she has to adjust clothing that is not sitting as it should ......here she is attending to Kristan's gaping blouse with a swatch of gaff tape....

Its always important to provide the images that are suggested by the client.We create a shot list. After this collection of images is achieved it is good to suggest extra images which may include changes to clothing,lighting,props and possibly some set changes or addition of props. This series of 3 images (above) was selected by our clients to be printed as a large triptych,this will hang on their wall, along with other strong monochrome images.

A great shoot with Kristan and Matt.

Thanks Maree your a legend

Little Lights-Big Results

The second Little Lights-Big Results workshop went off really well with the strobes and gels rarely getting cool. Amy our subject was fantastic and her red hair produced great images for the participants.

Below Maree is holding a magenta gelled strobe to light Amy from camera right whilst the brolly is wearing 1.5 CTO gels to compensate for the tungsten in-camera WB.The backdrop is lit with bare strobes...hence the blue cast.SB600 camera right and left, SB26 on background camera right and left.

We will be running more seminars in the new years with various topics, including natural light portraiture,night street portraiture, post production and work flow topics.If there is something your interested in let us know. enquiries@ricwoods.com.

ABOVE: Myself and Amy demonstrating lens selection ,depth of field and light fall off.

BELOW:A demonstration to show balance of strobe out put to illuminate Amy at F10 and a shutter speed of 1 second to capture the 15w globe in the lamp.Amy's face illuminated by Maree with small tungsten torch ( to balance the lamp)

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

Merry Christmas to ALL.We hope you all enjoy the break.Maree and myself decided to make our Christmas Card the other day.

Set-up:We placed an SB600 high camera left fired by pocket wizard,2 SB24s optical trigger left and right onto the background.Shot the cameras under the same lighting then dropped it into the shot in post.I did the tree illustration for another job.





By the way, a special mention of David Barnes at ProAm photo lab on Brunker Rd Adamstown. Thanks for your great work through the year and providing us with excellent service. We encourage local photographers to support their local labs, they cannot compete with the mass printing franchises for cost...but they can give you better quality and service.

GREAT JOB BARNSEY...

LITTLE LIGHTS -BIG RESULTS...a seminar on the off camera flash

Maree and myself ran the first of hopefully many photography seminars last night. Ebony was a fantastic subject and all enjoyed the course.

This session was based on using off camera flash to create several different end products.We showed how to make a pure white ( knock out ) background to provide graphic artists with clean images....if you provide them with clean images like this they will love you forever and it DOES general repeat commissions.

Behind the scenes look at the set we built for this shoot.

Here is the cropped image we were looking for



Next we changed the lights again to create a street grunge look


Many of the students captured Ebony is strong images

Here is a quick video grab of the students in the studio setting

The next seminar is in 2 weeks, there are a few spaces left. Those interested can contact Maree by email maree@ricwoods.com or call the studio on 02 4962 1066.

Its a great night

Maree the ever helpful assistant

We were shooting some high key mono portraits of two brothers, the dappled sunlight was a problem, until I sent Maree upthe tree with a sheet of corflu, to gobo the sunlight.Note that she removes her shoes, sensitive to nature.

John Paul Young- photo shoot

John Paul Young was in the studio the other day for some new promo images . It was a great shoot and JPY was a real pro to work with, easy going and relaxed.Maree was assisting and Jo Nelson was doing Hair and make up.

Some of JPY's well known songs include "Yesterdays Hero", " I Hate the Music" I especially liked the film clip from Strictly Ballroom where he sings "Love is in the Air". It was a great film production.

LOCATION PORTRAITURE WORKSHOPS.(participants images below)

We are running some location portraiture workshops at ProAm photography lab Adamstown .
Maree has been the model,subject,victim and Ive been the tutor,bogey man and box head.
The participants are doing fantastic and we are having a great time. More images on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricwoods/

LOCATION PORTRIATURE- a class I'm running at ProAm Photo Lab

These are a few of the images were by the participants of a workshop I'm running that was arranged by David Barnes the owner of Pro Am a film lab at Adamstown ( nsw australia)

This was the third night of the 5 sessions and I decided to take the group outside to use some off camera strobes and gels. The previous week we were shooting inside ProAm and the group had a great time with Maree ( my prod mgr/second photographer/very often photography subject). Everyone was very quick to learn how easy it can be to create beautiful light with good exposures and lighting ratios.

I demonstrated how long it takes to set up a scene using 4 strobes and how the strobes are fired by pocket wizards. I have 6 of these and this was great as it enabled me to have 2 students shooting at a time. This is easy on the recycle time for the strobes.

I have 10 + Maree in the group and its fantastic to have people so eager to learn...for me it doesn't get much better.

I used this lane way beside ProAm to demonstrate how easy it is to find and interesting shoot location when you sculpting with light.

The focus was to create not only interesting images to to use it to demonstrate how to direct the subjects, pre visualise the image, synchronise the action and the camera...Here Maree is the victim of some crazy stalker (me)

...then Maree found a bag snatcher...

Below, this is a great double page spread...I can see almost see bold text running down the right side of this image...

The group learnt how to drop the ambient light right down but retain detail

Then the paparazzi became to victim of an unwilling subject.

We then turned around and lit the wall behind us for another completely new scene and tone...

Maree as always gave plenty of great subject matter....

I really liked some of the images captured by those waiting to shoot with the radio triggers

We even kidnapped "the Pizza Guy" for a few of the images.....

I'm looking forward to the next session .We will shoot some inside portraits and Ill show them my post production tips. If your interested in participating in Location Portraiture Workshops shoot me an email enquiries@ricwoods.com