Music Video in Japan of the artist Edwin Rivera | Shot and directed by Rodrigo Leyva

Here's a music video that I shot and directed in Japan on October 2012, it was an amazing experience and I hope you guys like it!

Cheers,
Rodrigo Leyva
www.valeystudio.com
www.rodrigoleyva.com

Wedding Session | Shooting with hard sunlight | Lighting control

Last week I had the pleasure of working with a great couple in Rosarito, Mexico at Calafia Hotel.

The session was at 1pm, bright and sunny day, the sun was hitting really hard but it was the only available time to shoot the wedding session.

I'm sure photographer's have had that problem before when you have to shoot in the middle of the day when the sun is at it's worse for pictures. So what I recommend to do is to look for the shadows and spots of light. Play with the shadows, if you have speedlights with radio slaves you could also use them at it's max power to compensate the ambient light but this will depend on what you want on the background.

In this case I ended up using the sun as my main source of light, posing towards the light and playing with the shadows, when your models start closing your eyes because of the sun just make them close their eyes all the way and ask them to relax their eyebrows right before the shot. I did use speedlights to capture the ocean on the background on some shots.

Take advantage of the hard light because hard shadows come along with it, I love playing with shadows because you can create high impact pictures. In the following link you will find the gallery of the pictures I was able to capture, good luck guys!

CLICK HERE for full Gallery of wedding session

Photography: Rodrigo Leyva | Valey Studio

www.valeystudio.com

www.rodrigoleyva.com

Modeling photo shoot / Shooting models

Hi guys!

Yesterday I had an amazing photoshoot with the famous dancer from L.A. Emily Alabi, choreographer for celebrities and singers such as Ne-yo, Far East Movement, Snoop Dogg, Selena Gomez, international awards as dancer like "World Salsa Champion", finalist on "America's Got Talent", choreographer for "Dancing with the stars" in Italy, model for renowned commercial brands such as "Nike", "Jack in the Box" and many more brands, dancer on popular TV shows as well.

It was a pleasure working with her, having a professional model in front of you and applying all the knowledge you have been learning all these years is such a perfect combination. I'm a big fan of continuous education, I believe that you will never stop learning and you can always get better, learn from others!

Some tips for models: when you have a professional photographer shooting you it's very important to be confident, don't ever get intimidated by the camera and feel at home, photographers are used to have models in front of their camera and you will not be the first model that they're shooting. So feel comfortable and feel like you're alone posing for yourself in front of the mirror, you were born for that! If the photographer doesn't start that connection you can always start it, flirt with the camera, inspire, and I guarantee that something will happen and the shoot will be amazing! You can inspire us!

For those fellow photographers, here some tips and info: Having a least the right basic equipment is necessary. I shot all the session with my Canon 7D and only one lens Canon 85mm 1.8 since I didn't bring my Canon 28mm 1.4 which I love, but for a photo shoot this was perfect, try to use lens 50mm or higher, they will always give you a better perspective and impact when you take headshots or single-person shots. And if you're reading all this till now you may have read about the tips for models, so it's your job to establish that connection with the models in front of your camera, make them feel comfortable, be outgoing, confident, treat them like any normal person and I guarantee you that you will make them feel comfortable. 

Make sure you practice a lot so the basic knowledge of technical stuff is in the back of your mind and you just concentrate in being creative and seeing things differently so you can get a variety of shots. Use the walls, play with the angles, look for patterns and the most important, search the light if you're in exterior, or use the light right if you're in the studio, play with it. 

Leave you two pictures of the session. Good luck!

This is the LINK FOR THE PRIVATE GALLERY:
http://www.valeystudio.com/#!emily-alabi/c1fcu

Cheers,
Valey Studio

Rodrigo Leyva
www.valeystudio.com
www.facebook.com/valeystudio
 

Real Estate Photography Project by Rodrigo Leyva

Today I just finished the project that took 2 weeks to accomplish. Real Estate Photography. It was a really good experience to realize this kind of photography work. Challenging, requires of full control of lighting and the right vision of perspectives and angles to use when shooting the properties to make everything look symmetric and nice.

For those fellows photographers I really recommend you use as much artificial lighting (flashes, speedlights, everything you have) to compensate the lighting from outside with the inside and be able to capture beautiful pictures with nice and blue skies and colors.

Cheers,
www.valeystudio.com
www.rodrigoleyva.com

Here's a link of some of the pictures I shot :)

Here's a link of a picture with some of the lighting I used :)