photo shoot

yesterday my friend Ed, who's a photographer, was doing a full-day photo shoot at the club M1NT and i was there to assist him. i was excited to see all the behind-the-scenes of it, and even though it was a long day, i thought it was a good experience.

i've never been inside M1NT before, so i found it smaller than i expected, but i was impressed by some of the interiors and furniture designs. it was bold and colorful, and there were some really awesome pieces of furniture there. the coolest thing was probably the wall-length SHARK TANK, with 8 baby sharks swimming around. and i thought i had to go to Ocean Park to see sharks! A shark tank set against red sofas in a dark lounge... damn, is that dangerously sexy or what? or sexily dangerous? is there even a difference?

anyways, i didn't get to do any shooting myself since i was there to assist him with the equipment and gear, but i was still excited to there to help out and see what it's like at one of these shoots and learn about the lighting equipments. and the models were pretty amazing... they needed very little direction and were able to instantly strike endless poses on the spot, like "bam, bam, bam" one right after another with no hesitation, with each pose always looking very sexy. if it were me, after 3 poses, i'd be like "shit, what else can i do that won't make me look retarded?!" i guess that's why i'm not a model. hahah!

i only got 2 hours of sleep before the photo shoot (late night partying... crazy of me, but i knew that i didn't need to do any shooting, so i figured a little lack of sleep wouldn't do me much harm. haha). after some coffee, i was good to go. but then it ended up lasting nearly 11 hours, so after it ended i was ready to go home. but that's nothing cuz i can't even imagine how tired the photographer was. he was on his feet and behind the camera all day long. not to mention constantly thinking of how to pose the models and how to best utilize the backgrounds available. there's a lot of creativity and mental visualization required for photography (also true for many of the arts-related professions). to have the ability to able to look at an ordinary object or scene and be able to visualize it at an angle and perspective that's creative, unique, and artistic. with shooting people, it's not just about capturing them while they're looking good (although that's definitely a big part of it!), but also having good composition, and being able to incorporate any patterns and colors of the background to make it all an interesting shot.

anyways... even though i didn't have my big camera with me, i had my little Canon point-and-shoot, so i caught a few behind-the-scenes/decor shots. here's a few of them.

Ed in action during one of the poses with two models.

the shark tank!

dangling beads with a round wall fish tank