Category Archives: Models

USA – Milk Workshop – October 2012

August 24, 2012 – 13:30

Yes! After months of preparations the trip is finally and officially happening!!

Some time ago I was invited to California by my good friends and awesome filmmakers The Bui Brothers to be a guest presenter and run an edition of our Liquid Workshops!

Since then we have worked together on several projects all over Europe, but for a very long time we couldn’t match our calendars… until now.

Today, everything is fixed, dates and venues are secured and we are going to make a splash on the West Coast!

*** Edit *** As expected the first event Sold-Out almost instantly!
And to meet an overwhelming demand we have decided to organise an additional event:
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16th October – Milky Seminar + Live MilkShoot


Proceed to Booking Page >>

During the hyped 8 hours we will give all our heart and soul and will cover.
You will get to know everything from our workflow from start to finish.

Our Partners
I am very happy to let you know that for this event the IQ180 camera system is provided by PhaseOne, and the Lighting Equipment by PaulCBuff Inc.

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If you would like to join us please book your seat asap to avoid disappointment – First Come First Served!

Agenda:

9:30 – 9:40 Meet & Greet

PANEL 1
9:40 – 11:30 Open with an Overview Presentation:
– Covering “know how”,
– Photo and Lighting gear
– Tools for Milk forms,
– Approach and a deconstruction of the previous images,

11:30 – 11:45 Questions & Answers
11:45 – 11:55 Coffee Break

PANEL 2
12:00 – 13:30 Full Liquid Photoshoot:
– Setting up and principals when working with Liquids,
– How to position your lights and explore how to use three-dimensional lighting effects
– Showing how to get the right results,
– Working with a model and assistants,

13:30 – 13:45 Questions & Answers
13:45 – 13:55 Coffee Break

PANEL 3
14:00 – 17:15 Post-Production Session:
– An overview presentation – explaining approach to the liquid post-process
– Work through the post-production of the taken photographs up to the Final Milky Illustration,
– Get to know recipes, tips and techniques for bringing the whole shoot together.

17:15 – 17:30 Questions & Answers

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We will shoot at EVS Studios in North Hollywood, California.

More Information/Enquiries:
> Need more info? Got a question? Please check The Booking Page or drop us a line on email Workshops@AurumLight.com and we’ll get right back to you.

To give you a little teaser of what might happen, please enjoy Jay Jessop in our latest work Jay vs Jay.

More about that piece and BTS material next week.
And now after a very busy week and absolutely smashing Workshop in Frankfurt we are off to Venice to recover and get ready to bring you more awesome stuff!

Please watch that space.

Cheers
Jaroslav @AurumLight Team

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You might also like:

MILK WORKSHOP – Australia 2011 SUMMARY
Playing with water: THE SILVER ANGEL !
The Milky Nun !
MILK WORKSHOP – London 2011 SUMMARY
MILK WORKSHOP in London

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By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Graphics, Liquids, Milk, Workshops & Events | Comments (1)

THE TRIAL – How was it done?

December 15, 2011 – 02:27

After publishing photographs from The Trial, my recent conceptual shoot, I’ve received a ton of emails asking ”How was it done?” and “How on earth we managed to convince over 50 girls to take part in the project!”

I will be more than happy to answer, but first I would like to thank you all for your messages and kind words, I really appreciate them all!

OK, So let’s get straight to the point!

Working around your limitation is what photography is all about really.

“Do you need a big budget to do big things..?”
- I don’t think so!

What matters is thinking outside the box and always willing to go the extra mile!

The Courtroom scene was the most challenging illustration.
We had no budget to hire over 50 models or the full house of lighting gear…

So instead I decided to Shoot in Sections.

I have prepared a little animation to give you a full understanding of what this involved:

 

 
The camera – Phase One!

For this kind of work, you want to have something which will justify the scale of your project.
And I knew I wanted the best possible output!

I decided to try the Phase One camera system, and to say that I am thrilled with the quality of the final images is not enough.
I worked with P65+ Digital Back  and I think that the resolution, quality and level of noise is just superb.
When your focus is in place you will get an extraordinary level of details and – to paraphrase my friend Drew – “the Angels sing!”

And that illustration when printed at almost 2m wide paper is just breathtaking!

[To Enlarge please click on the photo]

 
Now with the introduction of the new model – Phase One IQ180 Digital Back with over 80MP, and extraordinary quality and detail – they just rewrite the standards!

I hope to put my hands on the beast soon enough to shoot with it my new project – Awakening!

 
The Setup: Gitzo + Manfrotto

If you can manage to keep your camera locked dead tight on the tripod and keep the lighting consistent – it allows you to multiply not only models but also the lighting setups!

When working with such a camera – and the medium format is not a small body – and large groups of talents + team on the day , there are so many things around you that the least important thing to worry about is to secure the consistent output – you want to be sure that the rig keeps the frames identical.
For that you need to go for the sturdiest tripod which you can get.

We worked with Gitzo GT5660SCT Giant Tripod with a fantastic Manfrotto 405 Geared Head which allows for an absolute fine detail camera position adjustments.

To make sure you will not move anything while shooting – we tethered and operated the camera from a laptop via Phase One, Capture One software.

 
After all that… it is just as simple as layering final frames in Photoshop!

And other than that, there was almost no postproduction on the images.
You gotta love it, when it is all done in Camera!

Oh, and if you missed my previous post here is the complete Behind The Scenes Video from The Trial and the final photographs you can find here [click]:

 


Cheers
Jaroslav
www.AurumLight.com

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THE TRIAL by AurumLight Studio

 

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Location | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (6)

Halloween: Trick or Treat !

October 31, 2011 – 19:47

so… Trick it is!

The Ghost:

It’s been a while since I last shared some of the Photoshop tricks and this is a great occasion to do that!

Here is the image I shot last year, the concept was a Deadly Dinner, and we have made a series of illustrations, the one below is one of them.
You can find the full story Here.

Let me take you through the Ghost Effect I used above.

First note is that like in case of our Liquid Illustrations all the elements were photographed on the same day with the same lighting, and camera locked on tripod.

This is essential to keep the right perspective and values when working on composite.

First step was to pick the right frame with Olya (on the left), Deona (on the right) and desaturate it.
The second step is a simple treatment of that layer with the GLOWING EDGES photoshop Filter.
Depends on your base frame sometimes it is good to bring back some of the details to our ghost figure!
I did that by adding the mask with a smoke pattern on it:

The final step is to add more smoke layers to create convincing fading effect.
I used simple black and white smoke photographs and placed them above our composite in SCREEN blending mode. To match your smoke layer and the ghost figure you will have to play a bit with the LIQUIFY filter or WARP transformation tool, and voila!

The Blood:

One of the downsides of this test shoot was that even though we had a fake blood we couldn’t use it on the day. So all the blood had to be done in postproduction.
So… how?

Here is the final frame of the Vampire:

and here is the Before and After:

We photographed the blood afterwards and just layered those frames over the original illustration using the MULTIPLY blending mode.
This example should help to understand the general idea:

;-)

The MULTIPLY blending mode helps you to match the different skin tones – you can always lift or tone down the brightness using the LEVELS in photoshop, then it is a simple matter of masking out the unwanted portion of the blood layer.

And here you can see a few more illustrations where I used the same technique:

Cheers
Jaroslav
www.AurumLight.com

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Graphics, Test Shoot | Comments (3)

THE MILKY NUN !

February 17, 2011 – 13:55

Hi there!

I am very pleased to post another “MILK” illustration which we accomplished last week here in London.

But this time I wanted to build a bit more complicated form than usual !

” THE  MILKY  NUN ! “

[Click Image to Enlarge]

OK, let’s start from the beginning…

I came up with this idea long time ago but only recently we decided to go ahead.

When you do shoot something like this, the essential element is the concept.  And this time it was The Nun!

I wanted to mix innocence with a hint of devilish flavour!

Usually we are shooting Milk on Black BG but to reinforce innocence I decided to go for White.

Here you can see our reference photos:

The final image is an effort of the whole team which worked hard with me to make the whole process smooth and efficient as possible and I am very fortunate to have very talented and devoted people on board.

Few behind the scene photos taken by Meera,  where you can see Katkinoko doing her magic with Hair and Make-up, Sophie the Wardrobe stylist, my first assistant Magda and Ola, Misha and Michaela!

Last but not least!

Kudos to our fantastic model Ella Darling!

She was absolutely amazing – not everyone can handle 15 litres of cold Milk !

P.S. WORKSHOPS !

I would like to say thank you to all  who are contacting us asking about possible Workshops, advise or just postproduction technics!

I am pleased to say that we are planning to organise a two day Workshop in London later on this year!

If you are interested just drop us a line on info@AurumLight.com with title “Workshops”.  We will send you a Newsletter as soon as we confirm dates!

So please watch this space!

Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com

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By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Liquids, Milk, Portrait, Workshops & Events | Comments (9)

“THE PICK-UP”

January 17, 2011 – 00:25

 

For the start of 2011 we are dropping something light and hopefully a little funny.

This series we shot back in 2010 but I have only just now decided to post it here.Hope you guys like it!

 

Our next post will contain slightly a “heavier” subject, so please enjoy the party mood before we will take you to a darker place!

All the best for 2011 and once again thanks for watching this space and all your comments!

We really appreciate all of them!

Cheers

Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com

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“THE PICK-UP”

[Click Image to Enlarge]

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and… Finale  ;-)

 

Please watch that space, there is more to come!

Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Location | Comments (1)

B-Movie “THE TRAP”

December 7, 2010 – 13:33

Hi there!

Today I would like to share a few images from a short series called
the B-Movie “THE TRAP”,
which we did earlier this year in Brussels, Belgium under the eye of Drew Gardner.
It was a pleasure to work with great group of professional people, below you can see the effects of our effort on the day!

The concept was to bring the climate of the classic B-movies and Si-Fi thrillers.

In our story the girl must go through the forest to search for her dog that happens to be a decoy purposely enticed by …

…well check for yourself:
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B-Movie “THE TRAP”
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[Click Image to Enlarge]
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And here you have behind the scenes video recorded by me and Bert Stephani
Enjoy!
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Cheers
Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Fashion, Location, outdoor | Comments (0)
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