Photo shoot with Antonio. We had planned it for long time – looking for place, arranging flash units, preparing our minds for it.

The best place I had on mind for it was Andres’ apartment with a white clear wide wall with enough free space in front of it for the flash units and me and my camera.

When I heard many months ago that Mikk has flash units he is not using and would not mind lending me, I shortly started dreaming about such photo shoot. I had planned to have more time to explore the capabilities of the flash units, but as I ended up getting the flashes day before the session, I had only tried them on myself briefly. I had newer and more professional flash on the left and older self made flash on the right. As seen on the photos, there is some shadow on the right side, which means the older flash unit did not do good enough job, or was not doing it at the right time – or more likely, I just did not know how to make it work properly.

With no theoretical or practical experience of such photo shoot, I was a bit worried of how it would turn out. Would be weird to say ‘Dude, thanks for getting naked and posing for 3 hours, but the pics are useless and crap cause I had no idea what I was doing.’ Hence, it was pleasant relief when from 300 photos we both found photos we liked.

The model – I think he is hot and I was very excited to have an opporunity to take the photos.

Antonio himself edited one of the photos, choosing the sepia filter. It looked great and following the suggestion I used same sepia filter on all other photos. All photo montage was done with Picasa. Besides the mentioned sepia filter, for some I used filtered black and white before sepia, and for some increased saturation after sepia, and for some I added glow at the end. Most of the photos have been run through Noiseware to make them smoother.

After 3 hours and 300 photos we were both worn out and tired when we were startled by a sudden clap from the older self made flash unit. I knew right away it must have burned out and confirmed my suspicion sniffing the flash. The flash looks ancient and I have no idea where to find replacement for the bulb.

Thanks to Antonio for the opportunity to take photos of him and especially for allowing me to publish the photos You see here. Also thanks to Andres for allowing us use his apartment.