Planning a photoshoot at DragonCon is likely one of the hardest things to do as a fantasy photographer.  Everyone wants to shoot.. sure.. but hardly anyone will due to the actual crumbled up mess that DragonCon can be. They think they have time.. but end up losing it somewhere between the Marriott and the Westin.

DragonCon has become one of my favorite things to do during the year.  I am trying to scrape something up on things to do to get the good costumers to do a shoot and actually show up.  I am not dissing anyone in any way.. because I completely understand the circumstances that the biggest con in the country can cause.  The challenge is getting people aware that you are shooting for them and try and scoot them away from the hundreds of thousands of people in the backgrounds.  Yeah.. con pictures is not really my thing. If I can get someone to come out from the wilderness, it is a huge score for me.

Take this lovely Kelly Lakowski – her and her husband are just amazing people and have superb costumes to show.  They are from Virginia beach and come down once a year for the big con (like the majority of the big costumers). This set will be for her Catwoman costume that really popped out at me because of the way this girl can bend. Not many girls are able to stretch and get down on the floor in a costume these days.

I was able to drag her down the the dirtiest and hottest (100+ degress, filthy minds!) stairwell in the area – and they were both totally cool about doing it.

Strobist info: This was shot with 3 lights.. one at the bottom of the stairwell, one at the top and one directly above her.  All 3 of the lights were gelled to yellow for the effect – the actual stairwell was lit green and ugly.. I had to make it my own ugly

more to come…

For some reason, it took me quite a while to come up with a neat little title for this post.  I set someone on fire.. and totally wanted it to be “YEAH!! FIRE, MOTHERF*****!  But then I had to realize that someone would actually have to search those keywords to find it in google.  Not happening.

This past few months, I decided to cross the boundaries that I would normally stay in and do something just a tad dangerous.  I have been wanting to shoot an X-Men Dark Phoenix cosplay for quite some time and the majority of the ideas made me say “meh” to myself.  All it takes is a quick second to look on over to Deviantart and find photoshopped pictures of some really hideous fake fire on a Phoenix costume.. or better yet, a background of fire with a cut-out of her standing in fire pretending to be mean.  None of it really excited me and photo manipulation is not really my thing.  I love experimenting with it and have had some neat results with it.. but I like being minimalistic with the shop.

The idea was blatantly obvious to myself.. “Hey.. why don’t I just light a human on fire instead?”  ……The Wife looks at me like she was about to set ME on fire.

The technicalities behind real fire stunts  becomes complicating as you try and research how to do it correctly.  There are on-skin gels, retardant gels, clothing, undergarments and specific fuels that all play into different approaches.  My first thought was the on-skin gels that we could just apply to the costume and set the actual gel on fire.  The actual process on OBTAINING that gel is just absurd… “yeah.. no, I do not work for Paramount Pictures..”

Phone call after phone call from all around the country, I began to realize how uncool it was being one of those “extremely small guys” in the film and photo production industry.  What did I then do?  I hit up youtube on how to set someone on fire.  I ran into a lot of .. interesting.. stuff.  Majority are drunken kids lighting themselves on fire and then running in circles trying to put it out.. most of them being unsuccessful and then sprinting in a random direction panicking.  STOP, DROP AND ROLL, PEOPLE!

I then got a phone call from on of my video guys.  He brought up that he knew a stunts guy that worked on Walking Dead TV series here in Atlanta and actually gave me the guys number.  Called him up, spoke for many hours and how we could make a fire stunt happen which ended up with me hiring him and his team.  It was an amazing relief and a great feeling seeing the idea move forward… until I got a phone call from the Warehouse property manager (where we were going to shoot at)..

“Sure, you can do pyro stunts in the warehouse, as long as you front up $100,000 for liabilities and insurance”

Oh sure, I got 100 G’s sitting right here in my pocket…  I said the F word record breaking times after that phone call.  Back to the drawing board.

I came up with an idea to do it in an easier, controlled location.  How about a photography studio?  I called up a big one here in Atlanta and talked with the owner.  He authorized that we could do pyro in the studio as long as we all signed his waivers (along with mine)..  NO PROBLEM!  But, studio backdrops are boring.  I decided to make my own backdrop.. and build it all by myself.

I needed something for a wide shot.. something that could fit within my frame of a full body-length landscape aligned shot.  I hit up Home Depot and bought 16ft of 8ft long plywood and a ton of 2×3′s and built me some free-standing walls.  Now, these walls have to hold something itneresting.   How about some colorful comic books?  Bought myself a few staple guns and had at it.

To be on the specific side, I wanted the comics in the background to be ONLY from X-Men of some sort… I was able to do that to the 99th percentile.  I noticed after the day that an avengers comic was supremely sneaky and got on the wall.. wasn’t going to cry over it. (can YOU find it?

I got an idea to burn comics with Dark Phoenix… not just any comics.. Avengers comics.  Some of you may know about the AVX coming in April.  A comic series for X-Men vs Avengers.  I decided to take it upon myself to create a “photo-promo” for the upcoming series… siding with the X-Men of course!

The day finally came to do the big shoot.  Everyone marked their calendars and everyone showed up.  The fire team was there in full force along with photo assistants and video BTS teams.  It all began clicking together.. shots were tried  and the majority of what was kept was decided upon “on the fly”.    I had no flippin idea what I was doing.  I had a shot in my head that I wanted to capture and it ended up being trashed because something else looked better.  We had a limited amount of burns due to the leather gloves only being able to withstand 2-3 burns before being completely ruined and charred.  The Behind the Scenes video explains a good amount of process and safety behind the burns – make sure you check it out.

More to come…

Dark Phoenix as Miracole Burns : http://www.miracole.com/

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Full Portfolio: http://www.bgzstudios.com/

xmen phoenix cosplay costuming sci fi fantasy photographer BGZ Studios

The sheer fact that I was able to pull off a portfolio-winning shot during an art show weekend is pretty amazing in itself.  That is exactly what happened during AWA 2011.

I go to art shows and conventions around the country (in which I am expanding to more this year) and I set up my big prints and show off some of my best work to the community.  Costumers from all around show up to get some shots from me and I am more than happy to try anything new.  This set was actually shot on a skybridge connecting hotels and the mall in downtown.  The bridge is almost ALWAYS packed with people crossing.. but with the help of some big dudes stalling people on each end.. it becomes an amazing looking environment!  It almost looks like you are on a ship docking area or a bridge onto it at least.. don’t ya think?

Strobist Info:

This was shot at tungsten white balance for the blue effect.  Compensated with Orange gels on 4 lights to light Tali

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Interested in how my last big shoot with an Emma Frost cosplay was made?  Check out my Behind the Scenes video of me and the crew making it happen. CAUTION – ferocious exotic felines are involved!

I made it kind of an introductory video of BGZ Studios also – it can be found in my ‘about me’  section also – a great way to see how I work on my shoots everyday

Enjoy the video – let me know if ya like it or have any questions!

Thanks Landon for being an awesome video crew!

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Emma Frost Cosplay, costuming, Sci-fi, fantasy.

It has been quite some time since my last blog post.. I have an amazing amount of updates to share with everyone so I promise to make the posts much more regular

Since I have been gone so long, how about I start off with a blast?  This photoshoot has been in my planning book for many, many months.  Meredith Placko, a friend and professional costumer, has an amazing looking Emma Frost cosplay and it really did spark this idea.  I wanted to create a set in which we would have actual snow to photograph.. I was going for that “wilderness tundra” look.. and to spice it up really nicely, how about a Canadian Lynx on the set?

The big day came and I got everyone together.  Meredith, Lindze Merrit for really awesome makeup design, The House of Canney for wardrobe and dress assistance and even a video crew to document the eventful day.  Oh, and I cannot forget about my assistants who helped me very much – Matt Seemann and Christopher Wong.  We had over 200 pounds of snow on set.. and I totally was not going to do that alone.

The biggest and most exhausting issue was the fact that we made the set on a very steep hill.  I wanted snow on the backgrounds of the picture and making buckets of it and hiking it up and down the hill took over 5 hours to do.  I had zero energy left by the time I was ready to begin shooting.  Placing lights on the steep hill was also an issue.. People couldn’t stand up there long to hold them due to the angle and the artificial snow was literally not touchable due to its EXTREMELY slippery texture.  Meredith could NOT move an inch -  Seriously.. if you touched it with your foot.. you fell on your ass.

The two exotic animals used was an African Serval Cat and a Canadian Snow Lynx.  The Serval was the most fun.. it was seriously THE MOST A-D-D animal I have ever met.  It was jumping all over the place, wanted to eat squirrels and was actually hissing at my crew rather playfully.  The shot with the Serval is mid-hiss.

The lynx took a lot of time to get familiar with his surroundings.  He got much more comfortable after about an hour of him looking around seeing where he was.  We were able to pull off the shot with the Lynx with a bit of luck.  He has been getting fed treats all day and was likely expecting one from Meredith

You guys may know by now that I am not really a photo-shopper.  I fix just a few things here and there.. I think I took a leaf out of the snow.. fixed some dirt spots.. the normal stuff.  the blue effect?.. yeah that was straight from camera.. do I really need to tell you how that was done?

I was extremely excited about these photos.  They are seriously some of my best work yet and I truly hope these photos are seen throughout the country. I mean, c’mon.. it IS Emma Frost here.. and there ARE exotic animals in the shot.. what else could be more epic?

Follow me on my fanpage to see more of my stuff and see my future projects for this year! – BGZ Studios Facebook Fanpage

So here is a call to action – which one of the 3 is YOUR favorite?  Let me know in the comments!

Now, I will not lie here – I usually hate shooting inside of a hotel during a convention.  In fact, I mainly schedule good ones outside and try to find some cool place around town.  But, this was different.  I challenged myself to try and create some pretty neat costuming photography in a  small itty bitty corner of the hotel near my art table.

I mainly wanted to draw some more attention to my newly created fanpage on facebook - BGZ Studios – and decided to do the absolute best I could by picking people out of the crowd for a small shoot in my corner – and still keep the highest of quality epicness that you’d expect from me.  Now, I do not charge people for this kind of stuff so the second they heard it was free, they were all over it.  A good bunch of other photographers love charging these fans who invested so much money on their costume.. and I really don’t see the point.  If anything, they should be charging us.  I will forever be free of charge to the costuming and cosplay community – but this is an entire story in itself that I can brush up on later

To attract cosplayers to my page, I decided to try and do a mass amount of photoshoots for some of the fans at Anime Weekend Atlanta.  My fanpage is meant to be a show and tell of all the photography I do – not a sales spam of crap.  I don’t think I’d ever sell to my fans.. I think its just wrong.. They are FANS.. not customers.  I wandered around and picked out some friendly faces and made some magic happen.

A bunch of friends stopped by and got some shots in the corner also.  Most of the time, I shot at f1.4 – my lights were immediately refreshing because of so little power usage.  It created a really cool effect with the tiny depth of field.  My lights were gelled for the inside coloring of incandescent and I had a ton of fun working my ass off.  I think the whole weekend went well.

Although I was inside the hotel a lot, I did not keep myself from dragging all my gear outside for other cool stuff.  Stay tuned for some really, REALLY cool shots – likely my favorite of all time!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by my booth – welcome to my blog and I hope you stick around to see all the shooting I do during the year.

Wedding requests come often during the year for me.  I select a seldom few, though.  Reasons vary in a pretty wide range.  Today’s wedding photographers seem to get into wedding photography for the money.. and that is totally what I do not do.  I do not market for weddings.. I do not advertise for weddings..  I do not go to bridal shows.. and really.. I just hardly accept jobs as a wedding photographer.

When I am called for a wedding, I normally start throwing a billion picky questions at the bride to get a better idea of what they want.. but even better, what I want.  One of my biggest drawbacks from weddings is the amount of absolute horrendous quality of photographers are out there today getting into weddings thinking they are some artistic guru.  I just do not want to be part of that – nor Do I want to fight to prove to anyone how bad these other photographers really are.  I just don’t find it worth it at all.

Another key aspect is the fact that the wedding party rarely wants to give the time to get great pictures.  These bridal portraits are just that – a bride gave me time to create really great bridal pictures.  That, to me, is a rare event.  If a bride or a groom do not want to give me a few hours of their time to create spectacular pictures for them, I just won’t accept the wedding job.  It really is that simple.  I received about 12 wedding requests this year so far..  I have accepted only 4 of them.  What do I do with the other 8?  I apologize, congratulate them and tell them there are millions of other photographers out there.  I am normally asked for a recommendation to someone local.. and frankly, I have yet to meet anyone that are truly artistic and stands out to me as a great photographer.

Now, if you are a photographer reading this, don’t be offended.  I have an extremely high bar of expectations when it comes to this.  I am always, always looking to better myself.  How could I of done this shot different?  Where could I have gone to make this a better perspective?  See, most photographers just don’t do that… and really, I dare you to tell yourself with a  straight face that there isn’t a flood of garbage in the photography world these days.  Go look at 99% of flickr.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying I am the best… I am far from it and I love learning more and bettering each and every click.

But, if you are reading this and agreeing that it sounds familiar, keep your chin up.  Stay who you are and never change.  Strive to be different.  Don’t do what everyone else is doing.. because really the odds are, they are doing it wrong.

More to come..

DragonCon was amazing fun.  This year, I tried to only accomplish a select few shoots but it ended up being close to a dozen.  I still had time to devote to each photo shoot and allowed me to create some awesome stuff.

One of my first shoots was with a Rogue from X-Men.  This cosplay was very cool.  Yoko, one of my newer friends, gave me a whole hour to create some epicness for her.  I decided to go on one of the mid-levels of the Hilton of downtown Atlanta and shoot into the sky and skyline of the city.  It was late and I scrambled around trying to create an image in my head.  A lot of the weekend photo shoots were shot in tungsten white balance to turn everything blue and then CTO gelled all 3 of my lights to compensate.  This is very similar to what I did with a Griselda Cosplay earlier in the spring. With a very dark and clear night, the white balance turned the sky a gorgeous blue.

I experimented with the gels.. took off one of the CTO’s to create a rim light which would also be blue.  I talked with Yoko to try and make sure I was capturing what she wanted and tried a few different setups.  The blue rim looks much better than the back of the camera now that I am at my PC.. I felt that would be the case.

The sun sets extremely quickly when you don’t want it to.  If you pay close attention to the backgrounds of the images, it eventually turns black over a course of 15 minutes!  This is when I felt like the blue rim would not mix correctly and slapped on that CTO again.

For a reference picture, just in case you have been living under a rock your whole life,  here is some fan art of Rogue by EdBenes from DeviantArt.

Most of all, it was a ton of fun and every photo shoot I learn so much.  An amazing shoot requires an amazing subject.  Well done, Yoko.

More to come..

During my trip to Virginia Beach, my stepfather and very good friend, Lt. Col Christman, is a War artifact collector and has an entire house full of old World War II weapons and uniforms.  One of his prized jewels is an old German Nazi bike from Indiana Jones – the BMW RZ75 with a side car!

Jeff completely decked this thing out with tons of apparel and symbols from WWII and the movie.  When I mentioned that I was going to try a lingerie shoot and needed a cool background for it, Jeff comes up and says “well, why don’t you shoot her on my Indiana Jones bike?”  What a great idea!

Katie is a model I met in Virginia who was a whole lot of fun to work with.  She knew a makeup, artist which I hired, and we got this project on the roll.  Since it was late in the night, there was zero daylight and meant for some dramatic pictures.  The only problem was auto-focus!  Katie brought her friend which I put to work right away.  Jeff called him the LB -” the light bitch”.  He had a good attitude about it all and played along and got everything working pretty well.

I experimented quite  a bit with different colored gels throughout the night.  Specifically, shooting at about 5700k and throwing a full-blue gel on my Quadra back-light made a nice looking blue rim and effect.  I then made her warm with a  1/4 CTO gel on my light(first picture).  I mixed it up and removed the CTO and swapped a 1/4 blue from the main light and tried different poses with each setup.

Shooting JPEG with my xbrite camera profile created some really neat results.  These touched photoshop very briefly for wrinkles or spots – you know how I work

What did we use for auto focus in the dark?  An iPhone of course!  Also, from this picture, you can tell this was done in just a plain old backyard

Atlanta fashion and Editorial Photographer

On my trip to Virginia Beach this summer, I planned a couple of shoots with a few friends of friends to get a more broader range of lifestyle portraits for my portfolio.  Rina, a friend of Shira, spent a few hours with me this week to grab some natural, beautiful pictures that may be useful for both of us.

A few feelings I really want to keep to my photos are sexy and beauty without adding sleaze and subtracting clothing from the model.  Although I will be moving into a lingerie shoot later this week, something I told the client was my style of shooting for the type of pictures they have in their mind.  Even lingerie can be fun, beautiful and different from all the mainstream crap that’s on the web today – something that most photographers on model mayhem don’t understand.  Even on my profile, which you can see here, I disclose fully that I really don’t want to be part of that crowd.

This shoot was shot with mainly natural light with a fill from my Quadra ringflash on and off-camera.

Rina was amazing and she really brought out a wonderful smile to casual portraits and I feel like it proves that not all pictures need to focus in on a girls ass to catch a viewers attention.

More to come soon..