Das Angel
Result of a late night photoshoot in the center of downtown Paris. Unsatisfied with the first couple shoots with Pyrotechnician Andrey Das, we got together one final time the night before we left France to do an epic shoot in front of a church with flaming ropes and an impressive 5 gallons of fluid.
The challenge was once again to do the entire shot in camera and blend flashes, multiple exposures and fireballs all without using photoshop. I’ll be doing a writeup quite soon upon my return back to Montreal on how multiple exposures can really get you some great results straight out of camera!
We’re currently in spain right now and will be shooting our final subject Cecilio Castrillo Martinez in less than 5 hours…
For those of you interested in hearing what we’ve been up to - http://www.vonwong.com/blog/week-3/
Kartel Royal - Core Logo
A couple months ago, a good friend and client of mine Sacha Rene asked me to do some simple shots of himself wearing a brand new line of t-shirts that he’s been working on. This one of the Core Logo is one of my favorite one of them. Love the little touch of blade here :) I proposed something really dramatic where I had two lights from the side and one carefully gridded snoot just touching up that logo a tiny bit.
For those of you who are interested in seeing the BTS of the shot as well as some of the others that were taken during our shoot head over to the Vimeo video by Claudio Hi-Def! - https://vimeo.com/41679123
Check out his website here: http://www.kartelroyal.ca
Hope you enjoy the video & photo :)
Distant
Shot I took at the Dead Sea a couple months back in collaboration with Ayelet Rabinovitch. Her car actually broke down while we were there and rather than wait around Tatianna and I improvised something with a mask that a local fan of mine, Irit Sapojnik actually gave to me.
The 85mm is a beautiful lens and this is the result… simple reflector, beautiful model.
Sorry for the lack of updates, the Eurotrip is absolutely exhausting!
Credits:
Models: Tatianna from Yuli model agency
Makeup/Hair : Omai Sherit
Clothing: Ayelet Rabinovitch
Photo: Von Wong
Retouch: Jessika Chiasson
vonwong.com - Facebook - Twitter - Flickr - Blog
Bill 78
Dedicated to my friends in Montreal - Paris, May 2012
- Flames by Baba Dequen
Perfect Equilibrium - National Slovak Theater
Sneak peak of one of the shots of one of our artists Ana Beschia from the National Slovak Theater who is being supported by fellow dancer Dominic Slavkovsky. We had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with them as part of our Von Wong does Europe tour. A super simple shot taken on a simple black backdrop, I find this image particularly exciting simply because of the way their bodies are so perfectly intertwined… hope you enjoy it too.
Setup light diagram provided by Sylights.com:
Our tour is sponsored by: http://www.slrlounge.com/
Studio Equipment/lighting/equipment sponsored by: http://www.lovinpix.com
Andrey Das meets Von Wong
Presenting Andrey Das - one of the artists that I have had the privilage to work with during my Von Wong does Europe tour. We did a late night shoot (10 PM to 5 AM) in an abandonned building and this was an experimental shot we took together combining multiple exposures and some amazing firebreathing. What that means for the less tech savy is : no photoshop.
More to come. I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted a “real” photo and I wanted to share a little more of the trip than just iphone instagram shots! :)
Enjoy. I’m off to bed! Long day tomorrow ~
Andrey Das - www.pyroplasticien.com
Les Artisans d’Azure - Escape
Final post from Montreal before we begin our Europe tour! Last chance to grab a DVD , print or polaroid :) www.indiegogo.com/vonwongdoeseurope
Check out the blog writeup for lighting diagrams, setup shots and more!
http://www.vonwong.com/blog/epic-medieval-photoshoot/
Also BTS video by Laurence Turcotte-Fraser - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJYW8GYMJa8
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Another glorious photograph of Les Artisans D’azure this time riding horses generally provided by the lovely Catherine Toussaint. These shots were taken in mid day sunlight so I did my best to overpower the sun with my beautiful Profoto D1’s provided by LL Lozeau but unfortunately I couldn’t quite get rid of all of the shadows… Bah!!
Shooting with animals was honestly quite a challenge, the horses were really not quite used to crowds and my initial idea of having horses galloping towards me didn’t quite work out. Maybe next time! :)
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By this time the sun had finally hidden behind the clouds and I could finally overpower the sun to shoot this group photo. This time around, all elements were actually present (yes, we had people crawling over the roof!). I wanted to try something a little different so I actually shot the whole thing in four seperate shots to create a group panorama. Exploiting the fact that profotos at full power require 7 seconds of retouch time, I shot the subjects farther away first so that they’d be properly exposed and wouldn’t expose the heroes closer to us! Friend and retoucher Chester Van Bommel (www.artsome.be) - one of the subjects that we’ll be shooting in our Von Wong does Europe tour -www.indiegogo.com/vonwongdoeseurope actually helped put this whole thing together, photoshop & all.
Read the rest of the story here.
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Two weeks ago, I received a message from one of my fellow photographers Kelso, who told me that the folks over at Les Artisans D’azure were extremely interested in working with me. I’ve always been a huge medieval buff so I made some time in my crazy schedule and squeezed in a quick visit. When I got there, it was like being a kid in a toy store… I was running around having the time of my life checking out everything they had to offer. By the time I left the store, we had already set a shoot date, found ourselves an awesome location to shoot at as well as developped a vague story. By the evening, after a couple facebook shout-outs, we were at 20 models.
A couple days later, I had assembled my assistants, makeup and video crew. A week later, we had horses confirmed. A couple days after that,LL Lozeau agreed to sponsor about 40,000$ worth of profoto flashes for my shoot. A couple days before the shoot, we were at 55 confirmed participants… Things were going amazingly smoothly…
The day before the photoshoot was a whole different matter… weather forecast announced -3 degrees the day before with snow, hail, 30km/hr winds and general unhappiness all around!!! Myself and a couple others set out to camp out the night before to get in some location scouting and planning and had a merry campfire in the wind, hail and more. Of course, no signal at the medieval village supplied by L’Atelier du Loisir meant that we had no idea how many people were actually going to show up the day of the shoot so we kept fingers crossed while huddling under the blankets.
I was pleasently surprised to see over 80% of the people that had commited actually showed up under the cold rain to join us for this amazing photoshoot. We had the most amazing committed models trudging and shivering through rain and mud just to take a couple epic photographs.
Here’s one of those shots.
Be sure to check back soon… Behind the Scenes video by Laurence and her crew coming up soon :)
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Costume Design: Les Artisans d’Azure - www.artisansdazure.com
Samuel Tremblay Gagnon
Marc André Thibault
Steeve Verville
Maxime Turgeon
Genevieve Cotineau
Stephane Normandin
Sponsors:
Calimacil - www.calimacil.com
L’Atelier du Loisir - www.gn.qc.ca
LL Lozeau - Profoto flashes - www.lozeau.com
Makeup:
Jessica Renahan, Lisa-Marie Charron, Patricia Lapointe
Hair: Jazz Hairstylist, Manuelle Lessard
Assist: Allison B., Jessika Chiasson, Nadia Zheng
BTS Photography: Claude Campagna Lupien, Monique Guillbault
Video: Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, Sael Simard
Photoshop: Chester Van Bommel - www.artsome.be
Les Artisans d’Azure - Ride to freedom
Another glorious photograph of Les Artisans D’azure this time riding horses generally provided by the lovely Catherine Toussaint. These shots were taken in mid day sunlight so I did my best to overpower the sun with my beautiful Profoto D1’s provided by LL Lozeau but unfortunately I couldn’t quite get rid of all of the shadows… Bah!!
Shooting with animals was honestly quite a challenge, the horses were really not quite used to crowds and my initial idea of having horses galloping towards me didn’t quite work out. Maybe next time! :)
-
By this time the sun had finally hidden behind the clouds and I could finally overpower the sun to shoot this group photo. This time around, all elements were actually present (yes, we had people crawling over the roof!). I wanted to try something a little different so I actually shot the whole thing in four seperate shots to create a group panorama. Exploiting the fact that profotos at full power require 7 seconds of retouch time, I shot the subjects farther away first so that they’d be properly exposed and wouldn’t expose the heroes closer to us! Friend and retoucher Chester Van Bommel (www.artsome.be) - one of the subjects that we’ll be shooting in our Von Wong does Europe tour -www.indiegogo.com/vonwongdoeseurope actually helped put this whole thing together, photoshop & all.
Read the rest of the story here.
—
Two weeks ago, I received a message from one of my fellow photographers Kelso, who told me that the folks over at Les Artisans D’azure were extremely interested in working with me. I’ve always been a huge medieval buff so I made some time in my crazy schedule and squeezed in a quick visit. When I got there, it was like being a kid in a toy store… I was running around having the time of my life checking out everything they had to offer. By the time I left the store, we had already set a shoot date, found ourselves an awesome location to shoot at as well as developped a vague story. By the evening, after a couple facebook shout-outs, we were at 20 models.
A couple days later, I had assembled my assistants, makeup and video crew. A week later, we had horses confirmed. A couple days after that,LL Lozeau agreed to sponsor about 40,000$ worth of profoto flashes for my shoot. A couple days before the shoot, we were at 55 confirmed participants… Things were going amazingly smoothly…
The day before the photoshoot was a whole different matter… weather forecast announced -3 degrees the day before with snow, hail, 30km/hr winds and general unhappiness all around!!! Myself and a couple others set out to camp out the night before to get in some location scouting and planning and had a merry campfire in the wind, hail and more. Of course, no signal at the medieval village supplied by L’Atelier du Loisir meant that we had no idea how many people were actually going to show up the day of the shoot so we kept fingers crossed while huddling under the blankets.
I was pleasently surprised to see over 80% of the people that had commited actually showed up under the cold rain to join us for this amazing photoshoot. We had the most amazing committed models trudging and shivering through rain and mud just to take a couple epic photographs.
Here’s one of those shots.
Be sure to check back soon… Behind the Scenes video by Laurence and her crew coming up soon :)
—
Costume Design: Les Artisans d’Azure - www.artisansdazure.com
Samuel Tremblay Gagnon
Marc André Thibault
Steeve Verville
Maxime Turgeon
Genevieve Cotineau
Stephane Normandin
Sponsors:
Calimacil - www.calimacil.com
L’Atelier du Loisir - www.gn.qc.ca
LL Lozeau - Profoto flashes - www.lozeau.com
Makeup:
Jessica Renahan, Lisa-Marie Charron, Patricia Lapointe
Hair: Jazz Hairstylist, Manuelle Lessard
Assist: Allison B., Jessika Chiasson, Nadia Zheng
BTS Photography: Claude Campagna Lupien, Monique Guillbault
Video: Laurence Turcotte-Fraser, Sael Simard
Photoshop: Chester Van Bommel - www.artsome.be
Just hanging on
When the darkness comes, and silent reigns… sometimes all we can do is just hold on.
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Sister shot of my photoshoot with stripper Suntory. We actually took the 20 foot backdrop and TAPED it to the roof to make this shot happen haha. Since it wasn’t one of those fancy thick ones, I had a fantastically fun time actually darkening each individual speck between chains to make the whole shot come out solid black. What a pain :P
Turns out I’m leaving in less than 3 days now for my insane europe tour and I have so many photos to barrel through and edit… videos to update… not to mention packing, organizing… !!
My mind is exploding with the amount of stuff that needs to be accomplished!!
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Results of a photoshoot from Yesterday. Took some meditative time yesterday post-shoot to cool down, relax and edit. It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and get some nice relaxing editing down…
The shoot was a pretty wild one and we’re going to have an amazing video prepared for you guys reasonably soon (though it might be ready only after we’ve begun our eurotrip to be honest!)
This shoot was thrown together in less than two weeks. Suntory, a male stripper, sent me a short facebook message asking me what my rates were. I told him that I couldn’t tell him a fixed rate unless I had a better idea of what he was looking for. He replied saying that he wanted photos of himself, dehydrated, hanging from chains with tar pouring down on him. My reply? Sounds AMAZING, I’ll do it for free. Why? Because I would much rather someone worry about paying for the most awesome photoshoot ever than paying for my rate.
We took his budget and re-invested it straight into the photoshoot. We had a custom metal bar built with welded hooks that could support over a 1000 pounds of massive metal chains we rented from a traction-chain warehouse. We rented out a friend’s loft for the afternoon and put the whole thing together in about 3 gruesome hours of hard work (you try hanging 200 pound chains from an 18 foot high ladder!)
Jessica Renahan, an amazing makeup artist who I collaborate with regularly put together a custom mixture of oil paint, charcol and vasoline that we buttered onto our heroically dehydrated stripper. Although we did encounter some technical diffculties here and there we did end up with some pretty amazing stuff.
Be sure to check back for the BTS video. We hung a GoPro from the cieling with the help of some Nasty Clamps to capture some pretty amazing overhead footages (we hope) !
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Credits:
Photo: Benjamin “Von Wong”
Model: Suntory
Makeup: Jessica Renahan
Assist: Kaleena Jay, Nadia Zheng
vonwong.com - Facebook - Twitter - Flickr - Blog
The Agonist - Rest
Second shot from my Agonist shoot!
Bts Video by Five Knights Productions – www.fiveknightsproductions.com
Alissa from The Agonist contacted me TWO WEEKS before shoot deadline to ask me if we could put together some sort of crazy shoot. After an hour of crazy brainstorming we managed to pull together an insane fight concept that we put together in one week (leaving one more week for retouching)!
We pulled our resources together and managed to whip up in a week: A garage to shoot in, destructible clothing, and all the random objects you see lying around (fire hydrant, couch, etc…). Alissa did the makeup/rips for all the boys giving me a good three hours to set up a crazy 10 light or so setup.
Full blog post with story/llighting setup:http://www.vonwong.com/blog/the-agonist-promo-2012-2/
Bts Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ps8f1UxiSI
vonwong.com - Facebook - Twitter - Flickr - Blog