Say hi to Eleanor, 6 months young happy baby, who we had a chance to photograph few weeks ago in our studio. She was very brave and put a smiley face on throughout entire photoshoot, credit for that goes to parents, family and friends (and of course Kamila) who came over to help and make Eleanor smile – you can see “girls picture” towards the end, ooh and one more “announcement picture” at the end of this post, so keep scrolling

Equipment used: Elinchrom Quadra RX with 39″ Deep Octa.

We love the expression of little Eleanor on this picture:

Here is the announcement I mentioned at the beginning of the post yes, Eleanor will be big sister in October of 2013, congratulations Marissa and Ryan! ha, Eleanor seems surprised too

Well hello there in 2013! As usual, here is my yearly pick of Super Bowl commercials, here we go:

6. Godaddy.com




5. GoDaddy




4. M&N’s




3. Cars.com




2. Taco Bell




1. Doritos

See you soon and don’t loose the power like Superdome did during the Super Bowl

Wow, it’s been almost 2 months since I posted anything new… It’s not like I don’t have anything to post, it’s actually the opposite, I’ve pretty big backlog now :/ but between changing jobs, being promoted at the same time and preparing for a marathon, I didn’t have much time to post any pictures on my blog. Work still keeps me busy, but I ran the marathon and at least I don’t have to run 30-40 miles a week (just need to run 50 more miles this year to meet my 500mi goal), so in the near future, you should be seeing some new stuff on the blog.

Here are the pictures from Van Bogaert family session in Downers Grove park, about 2 weeks ago, beautiful family, colors and fall look and feel. For main light we used Elinchrom Quadra RX with 39″ Deep Octa, CPL filters on lenses for colors to pop even more.

Based on my last couple of posts (and future ones), you might be thinking that my favorite shooting place is Gary, Indiana. Well, you might be right as Gary is indeed quite interesting location.

City of Gary, Indiana – where Michael Jackson grew up and home of Jackson 5 is – has surely best years behind it. It really fascinated me when we first cruise around with locked doors thru the city of Gary, seeing abandoned and burnt to the ground homes, bums on the corners, and people looking surprised that white people are in the neighborhood :/ US Steel Corporation – that used to be major provider of the jobs in the Steel City – Gary, but cut on the jobs big time during the 60s. As they had to lay off more and more workers – city’s crime increased. It went south after that. USS is still in operation, but it’s nothing compared to what it used to be, and Gary has lots of abandoned buildings, like old hotel stripped out of everything except walls, or abandoned church. Yeah, abandoned church of Gary, IN, is well known to Chicago photographers, and perhaps it might be considered cliche to shoot in the church, I still like to photograph there couple more times, before it falls apart OK, enough about the location. We had our great model Jessica, Elinchrom Quadra RX + Deep Octa 39″ providing the soft light and here are the results:

Note: because it can get dangerous in that kind of the hood, I prefer to go there with larger group of people, and my personal preference is to go there early morning – it gets pretty crowded in the church during the mid-day. That afternoon we came across at least 3 groups – 2 bands shooting videos and some photographers doing architecture photography.

As I said – expect some more pictures from Steel City – Gary

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: pictures don’t have to be amazing, but there sure can… www.bizior.com

I’m telling you guys, bachelor’s life ain’t easy, you gotta do a lot of stuff yourself, like cooking, laundry, etc Since Kamila left me for a period of 2 months, I’m trying to keep myself busy so I won’t do anything stupid So here are some, still warm, pictures from Noelle’s 1 year celebration. Noelle is the sweetest baby ever, adorable little cupcake, well check it out yourself…

Strobist info: Elinchrom Quadra RX with 39″ Deep Octa all the way. I don’t have to tell ya how great light comes out of that modifier, and it’s enough to lit entire family too. Fired via Elinchrom Skyports.

And here are some pictures from Noelle’s Birthday Party! Susie, Matt and everyone else involved did great job putting everything together, and man, what a great party it was. Check it out I totally see below ideas going straight to pinterest to inspire others…

End of May. Great crew, makup artists, hair stylists, assistants and models. Definite receipt for fun photoshoot Yes, it took me a while to edit the photos, but my day job is taking up more and more time, and also weekends…

Nikki.

I always try to give MUA and Hair Stylists some pictures for their portfolio, and tight portraits for that purpose would seem to do great job. So I brought the constant fluorescent light ringflash, which was perfect for makeup and hair presentation. Two things I had to take into the consideration:

• color correction. Because the temperature of the ringflash, which was circa 5400K, I had to correct the color in post. It was pretty easy, thanks to X-Rite Passport
• mixing flash light and constant light might be tricky. I used Mola Beauty Dish plugged into the B port of Elinchrom Quadra. I used 2nd port, because the A one was too powerful for me, yeah, I could probably use small flash – 580 EX II, but I had Quadra and Mola hookup already, and I didn’t want to spend time on another setup.

So Ringflash did pretty good job for main light, and Mola did the final touch for hair – it was slightly behind the model, camera right.

Then, we grabbed Elinchrom Quadra and Mola Setti and went around the building.

We were lucky to get out onto the rooftop, and this time sky was blue, sun was shining and I was fully prepared, meaning I had my ND filters with me – I’m going to write what I did to achieve that look in details at the end of the post.

Lauren.

Klaudia.

Zaneta.

Lorina.

Lianna.

You probably remember Lianna from earlier photoshoot, we shot on the same rooftop, but the conditions were slightly different. It was foggy and I was shooting available (!) light. Well, this time I had Kamila helping me out, and because I wanted to shoot somewhere around f2.8, I brought my ND filters with me. I used -3 stops Lee filter and Ranger Elinchrom to overpower the sun light. We cranked it up all the way to full power, so the recycle time took a second or so (I had slow recycle ON to save power on my pack), but it wasn’t that bad, and the pictures turned out pretty awesome:

Here is the BTS photo…

The Crew:

MUA: Deanna Roberts, Judy Izhaev

Hair: Michelle McNally, Emily Rhoads

Models: 7 Oaks Models

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: pictures don’t have to be amazing, but there sure can… www.bizior.com

Probably I’m not the only one who thinks that successful photoshoot is like well-oiled machine, everyone and everything has to work together to make the magic happen to have great end product. For an example: you can have great model, photographer but if you don’t have mua, the outcome might simply suck, or you can have mua, designer and the model, but if you photographer shoots Nikon (just kidding!!)… well you get my point. Fortunately, I had all the pieces together for this one: great model: Jonna, designer and stylist that I recently started to work with: Maritza, and my wife – Kamila as MUA.

I was shooting Maritza’s designer line, so I wanted to use the same lighting setup, and have very consistent outcome all throughout the shoot. As main light I used El Octa – Elinchrom 74″ Octa + older version of Ranger 1100w/s camera right feathered - that setup gave me very soft and even light on the model, however I wanted a little kick from the opposite site and also some light on the background – for that I used Elinchrom Quadra RX + Mola Setti.

Still waiting for film to be develop so expect mode of Jonna in the next few weeks

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: pictures don’t have to be amazing, but there sure can… www.bizior.com

My fellow photographer – Jeremy was hosting photography shootout sometime ago, and I decided to go and check it out, and get some pictures. Lucky us, we got access to the rooftop, but I didn’t take any ND filters with me, nor the assistant :/ I could actually work around not having the first one (ND filters), since it was pretty foggy and cloudy – as you can see on the pictures – I could still shoot around 2.8, 1/160 and ISO50, but not having an assistant was big pain in the ass for me. Shooting indoors I was OK, I dragged Ranger Quadra RX and Mola Setti myself, but taking the whole thing along with lenses to the rooftop was too much, and it was quite windy so I didn’t want my lights to fly away

We shot at the same location few days ago, this time I brought my ND filters and my assistant/wife and boy would I be in trouble if I hadn’t – this time sun was out, so I would get harsh and ugly shadows all over if I hadn’t use Kamila’s and ND filters’ help. You gotta wait to see what I’m talking about – I’ve 2 more sessions lined up on the blog before we come back to the rooftop topic

Models: Lianna, Megan and Patty, MUA: Deanna, Hair by Michelle

Lights: Ranger Quadra RX and Mola Setti pretty much everywhere except the rooftop pictures.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: pictures don’t have to be amazing, but there sure can… www.bizior.com

Those who know me, I don’t have to tell that I’m fascinated with India and its culture. Few years ago I was there for 3 months, being trained by the company I work for, and trying to explore as much of Indian culture (and eat Indian food ) as I could, but 3 months would not be enough to fully sightsee this incredible country, even if you have 3 months only for that. Sometimes I think that it would be perfect if my company sent me to India, for let’s say 1 year project, so I can travel and see everything Oh well, if everything goes well, I will go there for a vacation one day, and I will capture some of so versatile Indian culture

But for now, I’d have to enjoy Indian culture here in US Few weeks ago there was Holi Festival in Naperville, IL. Very beautiful event, where people say bye bye to winter and throw colored powder at each other.

About equipment: 70-200mm L 2.8 IS with CPL filter. I was thinking of switching to 85 1.2 or 100 macro, but I didn’t want to swap lenses with all the powder around Note to self: bring some plastic bag/underwater housing next time you shoot Holi Festival, so you don’t have to shoot most of the time @ 200mm

Matt, Susie an Noelle – thanks for coming with us!!

My fellow photographer wasn’t worried about his equipment – he was shooting right in the middle of where everything was happening, check his ghetto hood tho

Thanks for stopping by, and remember: pictures don’t have to be amazing, but there sure can… www.bizior.com

You should remember Noelle from 3-months photo session – happy and adorable baby. Time files, and few weeks ago we did 6-months photo session. Noelle was rocking out the outfits and posing like a pro

About the light: for the black background I used black muslin, and cross lighting – Elinchrom Quadra + Elinchrom Strip Box and one Elinchrom Octa. I wanted black background to be black not grey, so I was sure not to throw any light on it – I feathered the subject – just enough soft light to lit the subject, but directed it the way so it doesn’t hit the background.

Then we change the scenarios – thanks to Home Depot (hard wood floor, moulding, etc), some clamps and Kamila’s creativity we came up with the setup below. Elinchrom Elinchrom Octa was the main light, and 580ex II for the background.

And here is famous peaches – dog who can lick its own nose – very useful capability