FHM Russia, February, 2010

Editorial for FHM Russia, February issue

Photographer - Alexey Sorokin @ Larapixie
Stylist - Chris Benns @ Larapixie
Hair & Make-up Stylist - Svetlana Sorokina @ Larapixie/Mosmake

Models - Michael Tintiuc @ FM

Stylist Assistants - Amy Hancock and Hayley Nunn

Production - Kristina Larapixie

TUTORIAL #2 - Middle Ages Portrait.

Well, this is my second tutorial and in this one I will talk about one of my commercial shoots for TONI&GUY Moscow.

Equipment and settings:

- Canon 5D, Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L USM, 70 mm, f/8, 1/100, iso 160

- 4 x 750Ws heads

- boom

- 3 soft boxes 1mx1m

- 60º grid reflector with honeycomb

- 2 black flags

- white fabric 3mx2,5m

- portable background support

The idea was to imitate classic painted portrait and one of the biggest problems was to simulate day light in the studio. For that reason I bought a 3m (height) by 2.5m (width) piece of white fabric (#3) and put it on a portable background support system. Behind the fabric I positioned 2 heads with 2 1mx1m soft boxes (#1 and #2) one above another. The centre of #2 was located on the model’s shoulders level and was half stop less than #1; both were about half meter away from the fabric. This complicated construction’ purpose was to maximize the softness of the main source of light.

It was the hair shoot and I decided to add another source of light – just above the model’s head – soft box #4 with the boom, as it is shown on the scheme, so that the surface of diffuser was parallel to the floor.

If your studio is not big to locate the model far enough from the wall it might cause lots of reflection light coming from the opposite side of your lighting set-up; I wanted to avoid that hence added the black flag #7 on the right side so it keeps the contrast on the model.

Taking in account again the small size of the studio, I had to place another black flag #6 to hide the background from the main source of light to keep it black but placed another head #5 with 60º grid reflector and honeycomb to create a gradient on the background just on the right side of the final picture.

To make the background look like a canvas I shot a piece of grey peeling wall, placed it as a new layer above the existing one in Photoshop with the Overlay mode and then played with layer mask and opacity to get necessary amount of texture.

Yossy Helfer

It's always nice to go back and have another look at the images that have been taken 4 years ago... Hope to seeing you and your loveliest family very soon my dear friend!

click the image to see the whole series.

Hooligan magazine, December'09 - January'10 issue

Editorial for Hooligan magazine, December'09 - January'10 issue

Photographer - Alexey Sorokin @ Larapixie
Stylist - Chris Benns @ Larapixie
Hair & Make-up Stylist - Svetlana Sorokina @ Mosmake
Models - Debbie Bailly, Linda Thorson, Valerie Pain, Sonia Power, Michele First @ Close Models

Stylist Assistant - Amy Hancock

Special thanks to Nasir Mazhar for his amazing head pieces!

TUTORIAL #1 - Black on black.

Well, as I promised earlier this is my first studio lighting tutorial. Really hope you would find it useful.

This picture seems to me a good start to talk about the lighting techniques. Well, shooting black on black is not an easy thing though.

Equipment and settings:

- Mamiya RZ 67 + Digital Back Leaf 17 mp, 90 mm, f/16, 1/60, iso 50

- 4 x 500 Joule heads

- boom

- 3 soft boxes

- snoot

- 3 black flags

- A4 white sheet

For my lighting setup I started from constructing a “Π”-shape black flags set (5) around the model so it prevents unwanted reflections from studio walls and keeps a high contrast on a face. It also allowed me to narrow down the width of my soft boxes, as you can see from the scheme. Basically, the less the width of the light source the less of light falls from the side on the face. Then I put 2 soft boxes from the back (1, 2) and one on the top (3) so it made a “Π”-shape lighting source to lit the whole perimeter of a head. Lens hood might help but still try not to put your lights too close to the model as you would get flare on your pictures or there would be less of contrast.

The most complicated lighting source was a combination of a snoot (4) from the bottom and an A4 white sheet (6) above it. Snoot lit the sweater and white sheet worked as a white reflector to reduce and soften the light to highlight model’s chin, lips and nose. You also might try foil or a small mirror to get similar effect.

Regarding the postproduction, it takes quite some time to make skin look good when you lit it from the back/top. Also with sunglasses you usually get a self portrait and the reflection of the whole studio and to avoid it you should use either a piece of black background or any black fabric and photograph through a hole in it (very useful for product shots). To be honest, with sunglasses I prefer to remove reflections in Photoshop.

That’s it! Hope all that above makes sense. Please let me know if anything isn’t clear enough.

FHM Russia, November, 09

Editorial for FHM Russia, November issue

Photographer - Alexey Sorokin
Stylist - Mikael Baryshnikov
Hair & Make-up Stylist - Svetlana Sorokina @ Mosmake
Models - Alexandr Seliverstov @ Modus Vivendis
Producer - Stanislav Egorov

One shoot after another.. exhausted.

FHM Russia, September, 09

Editorial for FHM Russia, September issue

Photographer - Alexey Sorokin
Stylist - Mikael Baryshnikov
Hair & Make-up Stylist - Svetlana Sorokina @ Mosmake
Models - Alexandr Seliverstov @ Modus Vivendis
Oxana Bulyga @ Modus Vivendis
Photographer's Assistant - Olga Dozmorova
Stylist's Assistant - Stanislav Egorov

Backstage video directed and edited by Dmitry Goryachev

1st and 3d camera - Dmitry Goryachev

2nd camera - Anton Dyachkoff