Most of them where taken on the Golden Gate set where I spent most of the time. Being on the Action Unit where all the fun happens, guns, explosions, stunts, helicopters. What more can you ask for?

Hope you like them and let me know if you have any questions.

We had a super fast shoot together on this super hot Sunday, seamed like every soul in Wellington had decided to spend the day on the beach.

Here’s a quickie to get you started our new work together. Enjoy!

]]> http://blog.sigtor.com/?feed=rss2&p=403 0 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=377 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=377#comments Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:00:14 +0000 Sigtor http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=377 After a few month of working together with Terry on the feature film shoot of Caesar: Rise of the Apes where we got to talk about our common interest in photography numerous times, Terry and I decided to do a photo shoot together on one of our free days, for Terry one of very few, and see what we could achieve just for fun.

For make-up and hair, Malin Sjöström decided to join us whom I got to know off through the Model Mayhem community, catching my attention with her Swedish name and her dedication in film, studying at Vancouver Film School

Lighting wise, I was only able to use my travel kit including one SB900 shot gun flash with at 60×90 cm Lasolite Softbox  and two dodgy wireless SB200 flashes for rim light and such. I have a love hate relation ship to those so called wireless flashes which are awesome when they go off, but for all the times they don’t and they make you look like a complete fool… damn ’em! How hard could it be to have a radio transceiver instead of infrared? Or even an optical slave? I guess I’ll have to build something myself solve that problem. For the b&w shots I only used one little SB200 behind Terry.

Terry is a movement coach for actors, fight choreographer, motion capture performer and stunt coordinator. Terry choreographs feature films from subtle creature movement to giant battle sequences with hundreds of extras.

Films include:
Planet of the Apes
X-Men 2
Superman Returns
Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Incredible Hulk
Transformers 2
Avatar
Tintin
Caesar: Rise of the Apes

MAU done by Alecia Repp.

Check out VanEssence on FB www.facebook.com/VanEssenceTV

Here is a little sample episode of VanEssence show with Zara Durrani

]]> http://blog.sigtor.com/?feed=rss2&p=371 0 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=205 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=205#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 10:00:54 +0000 Sigtor http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=205 Old is new!

With the latest progress of the short film With Firm Intent I thought it might be a good idea to show some more behind the scene shots taken at one of the last filming occasions.

I must say that shooting photos for behind the scenes material is a luxury, no matter what people say about being on set, wet and cold, it is a luxury to have actors on location with make-up done and ready to pose without having to make any preparations. And those powerful film lights already set up for sure speeds up the process. What a joy.

Before I started blasting away I spoke to the director Neil Mayo to get an idea and a feeling for what he wanted to achieve and the style hes was going for, which I then tried to recreate as close as I could. That’s without actually having seen how the film is going to look, so these shots are only my interpretation.

Here is the teaser just released in wait for the full film that has been submitted to several New Zealand film festivals.

Follow this film on the website www.thequarryfilms.co.nz

]]> http://blog.sigtor.com/?feed=rss2&p=205 1 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=269 http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=269#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:22:54 +0000 Sigtor http://blog.sigtor.com/?p=269 Why does it always have to be like this?

This is what we achieved after only one afternoon of shooting with model, make-up artist and dancer Anastasia Khuziakhmetova. That’s all good, but 3 days later she moved to Adelaide Australia with her husband…

After some talks we decided to do the photoshoot mainly indoors to be on the safe side weather wise, in this case we were able to use the lobby of the Museum Hotel in Wellington. A very stylish Hotel with lots of differently furbished corners that worked perfectly with the fifties style we were going for. As usual I tried to work with existing light and just punch in with a small flash where needed.

As you can see Anastasia nailed those iconic expressions and poses from the fifties pin-up covers that we were aiming for with ease.

For the last set, Anastasia went for a more creative fashionized version of a Mermaid. We just made it to the sunset and managed to get out on to the rock before the last rays of light went south. Flash and reflector was used to aid the lighting, thanks Mattias!

And thanks Anastasia for making this possible, being make-up artist and model at  the same time a hell of an achievement.

We started at the upper parts of Roseneath in Wellington, there are some cute streets and walkways up there. We gave it a try at a zigzagging walkway but felt pretty soon that the wardrobe wasn’t matching the location, didn’t have to look too far thou before we found a white gravely wall accompanied by black asphalted pavement which work for what I had in mind.

After getting warmed up and shaking off the early rustiness of shooting together, we had planned to move on to a new location when it started raining, typical Wellington. Luckily we’ve got the chance to use an Hotel pool and still make good use of the day. The first shots were done with Regan sitting in a chair with a big window behind her and the flash bouncing off the walls behind me. Probably got some of my favourite portraits so far done with this simple light set-up.

Then we finished the shoot with some bikini shots in the pool were I just bounced the flash in the ceiling and got this rainy day to look quite warm. Even used the despised built-in flash to get some extra punch in the  playboy looking portraits by the pool edge.

For the three hours we spent together I’m pretty pleased and happy that we managed to save the day. Looking forward to see what we will accomplish next time. You can see more of Regan Hillyer at her Model Mayhem portfolio

Regan Hillyer was later this year crowned “Miss Wellington 2009″.

Publicity shot for “With Firm Intent“, a New Zealand short film written and directed by Neil Mayo, produced with Paul Tansley and starring Jocelyn Christian and Luke Hawker.

This was the second shoot for Neil Mayo’s film project, this time with a little more space and time to play around, even thou the weather wasn’t on our side. Or was it? I believe the rain added to the overall feeling of the sts.

It was a very fast and easy shoot with only two locations, first in the walking tunnel at the top of Plimmers Steps and then in a graffiti alley off Ghuznee St. The poster is one of the first shots we did, having the flash shooting from the top right corner of the image. Funny thing is that Ida Ekmyr had to be “hand” stand-in since Jocelyn wasn’t in Wellington at the time, tricky.

Later we shot a couple of close-ups were we had the flash firing inside the tunnel thus getting those half black, half white backgrounds.

When we had what we needed for the poster, we moved on to the second location and started to play around a little bit with light and looks. Half way through the shoot it started raining which just brought even more atmosphere to the shots, having the flash behind Luke I managed to both get a nice rim light and capture the rain falling drops.

I’ll keep you posted on the development of With Firm Intent and post some shots from the first behind the scenes shoot as well.

If you take a look at Luke’s cinematographic resume at IMDb you’ll see that his face was recently seen in Avatar, but even more impressive, he and his brother Ben Hawker made Blackspot, the only movie I’ve seen that managed to scare a full Embassy audience out of their seats. Kudos for finishing the film!

Make up and hair for this second shoot was done by Heather Lynn Baker, a very talented and professional make up artist that unfortunately (for me) moved to Seattle, Washington after this shoot.

The images in this slide show are in reverse chronological order to how they were shot.

The shots with the black background were taken in front of the ship called SS Venture, featured in the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong.

Here I used a strong flash from behind to get that extra uhmpfs needed in these daylight shots.

Heather made Mishas lips completely black to really stick out  in these images.

The 5 close-up shots are taken with the beautiful tele lens Nikon 70-200 f/2.8VR with the Canon Close-up lens on top. An absolute recommended toy in your collection. No added light, just natural outdoors shade.

And the white dress shots were taken at an old abandoned military base in Shelly Bay, in between the whitish buildings that served really good for reflecting the light at Misha in a soft way.