SoGal Ottawa: Prepping For the Future of Work
Recently, I was hired by SoGal which is “largest global platform for the education and empowerment of diverse entrepreneurs and investors”, Their mission is to close the diversity gap in entrepreneurship and venture capital. Sogal’s Ottawa chapter were recently having a networking event to ask how they could prep themselves and the youth for the future of work. They hired me to to film and put together a little recap video for their Ottawa Chapter. The event had a keynote speaker: Shauna Pollock: co-founder & director of Ottawa’s leading experimental prototype school, Blue Sky School. Check out the video below!
Music by: Ben Sound
Behind The Scenes: With Justina Sadecki & Chris Roussakis
Shows the retouching of an image shot by Photographer Chris Roussakis featuring Model Justina Sadecki - (Click to See the full thumbnail)
In this day and age, if you’re not on some form of social media you tend to miss out on a lot of talent. However, if the spotlight isn’t for you there are still roles in which you can be near the light but not directly in it. At Strast Media, we pride ourselves in being both in and out of the spotlight. Anytime we can help a fellow creative shine we are over the moon about it!
Which leads us into today’s post, as our founder Adrienne Row - Smith assisted, retouched and shot a video for fellow Ottawa Photographer Chris Roussakis. Chris specializes in commercial and editorial photography and is always willing up for a challenge, and wanted to do something a little bit different and also wanted to take the opportunity to feature model Justina Sadecki in his portfolio.
Check out the animated video for retouching and the Behind the scenes video of his shoot and Strast Media work!
How I Got The Shot: Tarzan & James
Short blog on how Adrienne got the Tarzan & James image.
March 5th, 2019
Lighting Schematic for Tarzan & James ©2019 Adrienne Row - Smith / Strast Media
Normally, my favourite images are high contrast with an accent of colour. I like to do larger than life production photographs, however I prefer their technical setups to be minimal. However, I wanted to try my hand at emulating a big production and lighting photograph to just see how far training my eye via the Algonquin Photography Program has gotten me.
The image that I wanted to Emulate was David LaChapelle’s American Jesus: Hold Me, Carry Me Boldly (2009). However, before even going into the studio I had a lot of prep work to do. Firstly, I needed to understand the lighting (as much as I could get through the camera).
Tarzan & James ©2019 Adrienne Row - Smith / Strast Media
Initially, I was under the impression that there was a hair light and kicker in the background that helped give the ‘Jesus’ of the image his glow. However, based on other lighting around the bodies, and after further consultation with others it was decided that the best route would be to use medium strips off to the side and pointing at the subject. Then, I decided to use a beauty dish up high, and a parabolic with a 3 degree grid down below to help create a harder shadow while also still ensuring light filling in on the subjects. Finally, to make sure that the subjects had enough even lighting, I decided to enclose my set with white v – boards. During shooting I realized that the Beauty dish was a little too harsh and hot (meaning that the subjects were having very bright spots landing on them overexposing certain areas) on the subjects – that I decided it would be better to bounce the light back into the white v – board to diffuse it a little bit more. And not to forget, I included an orange gelled snoot shooting through my background, to create the illusion of the sun setting.
Once I had the lighting figured out, I need to go get supplies. I found the greenery that “Tarzan” was sitting on at Michael’s, and then found the leafy flooring (which was actually a wall trellis) at Lowe’s. However, the most challenging part was creating the background. The background was printing on vinyl, after I found a royalty free image online. Once I had all these pieces and lighting together it was time to head to the studio and tie it together.
After shooting with my models (shout out to Lucas & Jesse for being great sports!) I then imported the images into photoshop from Phocus (Hasselblad specific software) and began to put it all together for the final image you see below!