Fundraiser for Pasquale

My friend Joey was involved in the fundraiser for Pasquale and invited me out to photograph the event at Rocky's Italian Bistro and Bar in Delray. Dayna, the organizer, put together a great event and the auction and raffle were a success.

Things got a bit emotional during Dayna's speech.

Gift certificates were auctioned off.

 Face paint was offered for the kids

Friends and family wrote their messages for Pasquale who passed away from Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Karaoke in celebration

And of course, if there is football on, the guys will watch.

Ali's Jewelry

Ali and I have been good friends for a while now and I have previously photographed Ali's collection of clothes. She is now making earrings and necklaces with jewels and feathers. They are available locally in South Florida and you can email her if you are interested.

  For the necklaces I used a simple set of a reflective umbrella from the left and a reflector on the right.

For the earrings I used a reflective umbrella from the left, reflector on the right, and a bare SB-800 from behind the earrings on the left to get the colors of the earrings to pop.

After we finished with her jewelry, I asked Ali to take some quick photos. 

The Dr's 50th

The Dr. is an influential person in the community and it showed. The night was a celebration of her birthday and all that she has contributed to so many people's lives. Through the night, friends and family thanked the Dr. and praised her for achievements.

The celebration included several dance performances by her daughter and company.

  

 The Dr and her children

The star kid of the night

When I first I arrived at the clubhouse I was worried about the white balance of all the lights inside. There were tungsten and fluorescent lights and everything in between. Gelling my flash was not an option. I always want to give the client the ability to choose between color and black and white, so for the majority of the night, I shot at a high ISO and relied on my fast glass. My favorite shots from the night are the over the shoulder compositions, creating the relationship of the speaker and who they are talking to. It's a composition that I picked up though my Videography class at school. Over the shoulder is a commonly seen composition in film.

DeadMau5

Deadmau5 at Mansions shot for Red Eye Productions

Deadmau5 played a sick set and the crowd was going off. The stage set up that he had with LED lights and screens brought it up a notch. Tough to photograph, but great for the club. My friends had a table at the first row of VIP tables and I got a great vantage point from standing on the couches.

 

Mansion was packed and there were people dancing everywhere.

For the opening DJ, the dancers rocked the mouse helmets themselves. I am not gonna lie, you could tell that the dancers had trouble breathing through the helmets as they danced.

The dancers went without the helmets for Deadmau5 and they brought it. 

 

 

Through the night I switched off from my usual 24-70mm lens and used a 10.5mm fisheye. A friend let me use the lens for the night and I took full advantage. With such a wide view, you can get so much of the club in the frame. Sometimes the fisheye can make things too distorted for my personal taste and I tried to keep people and subjects more toward the middle of the frame to reduce the circular warp.

If I took your photo during the night or you would like to see more photos from the night, you can view the full gallery at Mansion's website.

Karen

I got a chance to shoot with Karen at her house last week. Unfortunatley, when I showed up at her place I realized that I was missing the hot shoe mount for one of my light stands. The hot shoe mount is a little piece of metal that attaches my flash to my light stand. Through out the night we created ways to use another flash by putting it on a stool or placing it on other things.

For these shots on her couch, I actually taped the flash to her curtain railing. I recommend if you do something like this, make sure your tape is extremely strong. Last thing you would want would be your flash to fall. I used the flash taped to the curtain railing placed out of frame high to the left for a hard mainlight. I added fill with a reflective umbrella on axis with camera.

For the next set up I brought my 9" white backdrop and we were able to fit it in her living room. Karen looked great in the overalls and boots. The red bra and her sex appeal really brought it all together. These are shot with a single reflective umbrella.

I really worked on this pose with Karen and tried to create a logo/icon type pose of a "cowgirl"

For her third outfit, Karen wanted to do some simple portraits that she could send to her family. 

Karen has all sorts of outfits, costumes, wigs, and random things in her collection. Don't try to break into her apartment because she will take the samurai sword out on you. She had the robe to match and we got creative. One of the things about Karen is she is very versatile with the looks that she can pull off. She pulled this pose off silently.