Andriy Zolotoiy Photography Blog

Over a year ago I shot very interesting duo The Glowsticks. New band manager recently contacted me to shoot them again. The band has new members now and getting them all together for the photoshoot was quite a lengthy process. We started the shoot later in the day than we expected, surroundings were getting dark pretty fast as we were shooting under Gardiner expressway downtown Toronto.

This was first photoshoot where I used new Nikon D7000. Camera proven to be working properly without a hitch. I used 85mm f/1.8 for individual shots and 16-35mm f/4 for group photos. Everything was lit with two SB-600 flashes in TTL mode fired via built-in commander.

Very old photo here. I remember hair styling took over 3 hours here and still wasn’t finished. At the end I had about 15 minutes to shoot.

It’s been a long time since shot something like this. The secret ingredients here are lotsa makeup powder, some semi-liquid stuff, macro lens and hard colored light. I normally just use regular reflectors with grids and colour gels. See more on flickr.

Be fashionable, be happy, consider it the exercise. More here.

Model: amazing Mosh
Clothing: Healing Heart Designs

I find it fun to randomly look at these. They cause some emotions, I’m just not sure which ones.

While some might say that this lens is no good for portraiture I will disagree. Certainly, it’s not razor sharp as 70-200 VR2 but you can still get good subject isolation at f/5.6 and pretty decent sharpness.

The lens is flare resistant, shooting against setting sun didn’t cause any issues.

There is an option in D700 (and many other Nikon cameras) to set flash sync speed to 1/320 sec. While originally intended to be used with built-in flash it works for me with Alien Bees / Einstein and Cybersync triggers. Getting to 1/320 sec. allows to cut significant portion of bright daylight without closing aperture too much. While I was shooting outside under midday sun I could still see a little bit of darkening beside one edge of the frame but nothing too serious to even crop it. I’ll try this next time with D300 and see if APS-C size sensor makes any difference.

I’ve updated main website and this blog color scheme and made some small changes in the layout. Up until now I’ve had black and dark gray color schemes which seemed good at the time but eventually I got tired of them therefore goes white. Photographers’ portfolios are usually restricted to only neutral backgrounds that do not interfere with image viewing. Some say that black is the best background as it helps image to stand out, some say it’s white since everything looks cleaner. Anyways, change is always good.

And to wrap it up, the shot of beautiful Mina. Used SB600 with umbrella to balance daylight from the window.

That’s what happens when one single picture gets onto Flickr Explore. Suddenly bunch of dormant photos that’s been there for months or even years get a lot of attention. That’s Internet fame, read all emails and accept  good wishes.